Earlier this week, DorobekINSIDER host Chris Dorobekspoke withAppian's VP of Solutions, Evan McDonnell. You can hear the interview on GovLoop. The topic of conversation was how federal CIOs can navigate and make sense of the slew of information technology directives coming at them from the Administration.
The veteran federal technology reporter wanted to discuss the key principles in Evan's new white paper, "Adapting to the New Information Technology Directives: A Guide for Federal Government CIOs." As Evan points at the start of the discussion, the directives, starting with former Federal CIO Vivek Kundra's "25-Point Plan" and continuing through successor Steven VanRoekel's various "Firsts" initiatives, are all good steps - but keeping track of all of them is a big challenge. Evan wrote the paper to boil things down to their common elements. The result, in Dorobek's words, is "a 6-part guide to unlocking the secrets of a successful CIO."
The six operating principles that Evan cites are:
- Adopt "Business Ready Technology"
- Move from "Best of Breed" to "One Platform, One Environment"
- Scrap the Traditional Approach to Gathering Requirements and Writing RFPs
- Focus on Flexibility, Not Just "Cloud"
- Think "Lead the Receiver"
- Begin with Mobile and Social in Mind
Despite spendingbillions of dollars on information technology over the past decade, the Federal Government has achieved just a small portion of the productivity improvements realized by private industry on similar investments. As Dorobek points out in the interview, "the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a differentoutcome."
Evan's six principles all unite to change the mindset about how a government agency approaches, uses and extends information technology in the age of mobility, social collaboration and cloud computing. For a deeper understanding, listen to the interview and read Evan's paper.
Ben Farrell
Director of Corporate Communications
