As US celebrates 250th, CIOs turn youngish 30

On July 4, our country will mark its semiquincentennial — the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. 

But during this momentous year, let’s celebrate some other important birthdays. In this case, it’s a young one, a mere Millennial. A Gen Yer. Some might call it a “cusper.” I’m referring to the Information Technology Management Reform Act (ITMRA) of 1996, often referred to as the Clinger-Cohen Act after its two sponsors in the House and Senate, that was signed into law on Feb. 10, 1996. 

The measure required significant changes in the way government agencies managed and acquired information technology. Its emphasis on senior executive involvement in information management decisions, the establishment of Chief Information Officers as members of executive management teams, investment control and capital planning, process re-engineering and the use of performance measures to ensure accountability for IT spending results were much-needed management reforms. 

In addition, ITMRA made important changes designed to streamline the IT acquisition process, such as eliminating the General Services Administration’s central acquisition authority, placing it directly with federal agencies and encouraging the adoption of more manageable IT acquisition projects. In short, ITMRA empowered agencies to spend money more wisely (perhaps), not just faster. 

Congress cited twelve “findings” that served as the underlying motivation for ITMRA. These included the observation that, while the government had become increasingly reliant on IT, it failed to take advantage of advances in the fast-changing global IT industry. 

Government systems were said to suffer from obsolescence because of a failure to modernize (today we call this “technical debt”), due in part to poor planning and even poorer program management. Also noted was the inadequate attention to business process improvement and performance measurement, and the misguided focus on paperwork and process rather than on results. 

Maine Republican Senator William Cohen, one of the main architects of the legislation, put it most succinctly:

“This new law was needed to replace the outdated, bureaucratic and cumbersome methods the government used to buy information systems that failed to meet agencies’ real needs, were obsolete by the time they were delivered and resulted in the government’s paying today’s prices for yesterday’s technology.”

In April 1996, OMB Director Alice Rivlin issued Memoranda-96-20 with preliminary guidance on implementing the new law. President Bill Clinton signed an Executive Order that July (E.O. 13011) — later codified by the E-Gov Act of 2002 — outlining in broad strokes the responsibilities for CIOs and rules for setting up “interagency support structures” so that agencies could coordinate, exchange ideas on and set standards for IT projects government-wide (i.e., the Federal CIO Council). 

The order laid out basic principles on how agencies should carry out provisions in ITMRA, which took effect in August 1996, including principles that agencies should follow in creating CIO positions. In what was perhaps one of their more prescient statements, on July 17, the then-General Accounting Office (GAO) testified that agencies “have appointed too few qualified chief information officers and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) appears ill-prepared to oversee implementation of the law.” 

Within weeks, OMB issued “guidance” on implementing ITMRA. Ignoring anything in the legislation itself or the accompanying report language about the authorities of the CIO, the level of the position, who s/he should report to, and so on, the letter from a senior careerist suggested each agency could do whatever it felt best fit with its own existing structure and mission focus. And with Congressman Clinger retiring from the House and Senator Cohen’s nomination to be Secretary of Defense, there was no one on the Hill that could effectively push back on the weak, flawed implementation of the legislation. 

Many of those initial decisions (e.g., the CIO reporting to the Chief Financial Officer or the Assistant Secretary for Administration, lacking a role in IT budget formulation/execution or acquisition, a small policy shop with the old Director of Information Resources Management remaining in charge of operations, etc.) created problems for years thereafter. But where are we today? How is the CIO at 30?

Are we there yet?

If this were a GAO report, it would be titled “Progress Made, But Additional Work Needed.” Since that flawed 1996 implementation, OMB has made several attempts to bring greater organizational consistency and broader authorities to the CIO position. Congress has done so as well. 

The Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA) of 2014 restated much of what was envisioned under the Clinger-Cohen legislation. And several appropriations bills over the years have strengthened the authorities of department CIOs in budget formulation and acquisition decisions. 

With today’s increased realization that IT and its effective implementation has a significant effect on service delivery, program performance and bottom line efficiency, the management of IT has correspondingly increased in importance and stature. But there’s still quite a variation across government in organizational status, reporting relationships and delegated authorities.

A tenuous tenure

The tenure of a CIO doesn’t appear to be very long; turnover rates are high. Based on an informal interview of 60 CIOs, tenure has been estimated at approximately 30 months. Caught between staying up-to-speed on new technologies, and often, tough management challenges, many burn out after 24 months. 

A clear factor is that under recent administrations, more CIO positions have become political appointments, and the average life span of such senior appointees (regardless of field) has long been 18-22 months. 

“Information technology is probably the area where you have the highest turnover of senior executives,” notes a recently retired managing partner of a major recruiter in Northern Virginia. 

Cynics say the term CIO actually stands for “Career is Over.” Such churn becomes a larger problem when agencies are involved in multi-year, multi-billion-dollar modernization efforts (think tax systems at the Internal Revenue Service, air traffic systems at the Federal Aviation Administration, weather forecasting at the National Weather Service, and so on). How can one effectively guide such lengthy and complex endeavors when the top leadership changes every year and a half or so? 

IT ‘chiefdoms’

When I saw an announcement on social media almost a year ago that a former colleague had been promoted, I reached out to congratulate him for becoming a CEO. But he hadn’t advanced to chief executive officer. Instead he had become the firm’s chief ethics officer. 

The title of “chief” is now running rampant, both in corporate America and in government, with the number of chief-officer titles having more than doubled in the last few years. Nowhere is this viral spread more apparent than in IT. 

In a recent post, George Mason University Professor Alan Shark lamented this technology tribalism, mentioning an alphabet soup of new senior roles to include Chief Technology Officer, Chief Data Officer, Chief Digital Officer, Chief Privacy Officer, Chief Innovation Officer, Chief Knowledge Officer (sometimes called a Chief Learning Officer) and the newest entrant, the Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer. 

But he either ran out of time or space to list since he didn’t mention the Chief Information Security Officer, the Chief Transformation Officer, or the Chief Citizen Service Officer (sometimes called a Citizen Experience Officer). 

In spite of the purposes and good intentions of such roles, Dr. Shark notes that the problem is that each comes with its own domain, mandate, staff, policies, procedures, norms and culture. In other words, its own territory. 

One of the key skills needed to be a successful CIO has always been to be able to align with other senior management leaders — the Chief Financial Officer on budget formulation and execution, the head of acquisition on contracting for IT products and services, and the human resources director for staffing critical positions while competing with the private sector for talent. Now, the CIO has to either align or compete with all the other tech tribal chieftains first before dealing with her/his counterparts.

Thickening government 

From at least the time of President Ronald Reagan’s Reform ‘88 initiative, through the Clinton-Gore efforts to reinvent government (REGO) and through tech billionaire Elon Musk’s recent Department of Government Efficiency initiative under President Trump, great emphasis has been placed on “streamlining government.” Congress called for a reduction of 272,900 FTEs in the Federal Workforce Restructuring Act as a consequence of the REGO effort. 

Recent reports in GovExec and by Federal News Network indicate that about 300,000 federal employees lost their jobs in the first year of the second Trump Administration. Alas, workforce cutbacks reveal little about the height or width of a bureaucracy or about the actual layer-by-layer distance between the top and bottom of government. Because it’s clear that there have never been so many layers of management between the president and the front lines of government, nor so many presidential appointees and political senior executives at each layer. 

This phenomenon has been labeled by New York University Professor Paul Light as the “thickening” of government. 

I previously mentioned the 2014 FITARA legislation, drafted in the House by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and the late-Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va. In a statement at the time of the measure’s release, Connolly said “there are more than 250 identified CIOs in the federal government, yet none possess the necessary authorities to effectively manage IT investments.” And that was a decade ago, before the explosion of IT chiefdoms.

And what of the “so what” of thickening? The true cost of thickening, in Light’’s view, appears to be in the diffusion of accountability that comes with nearly infinite numbers of decision points throughout IT governance, expressed in disunity of command, a gap between authority and responsibility, barriers to involvement and even recruitment and retention.

Blow out the candles

Much has changed since 1996: with organizations, with government, with society and with how much IT impacts — and even can transform — all three. The issues we need to address in 2026 are what can be done to improve IT leadership and how large the impacts of improved IT leadership could be on government performance overall. 

And it’s with those questions, along with sincere birthday/anniversary best wishes, that I leave you, current and future IT leaders.