Budget Cuts for CIOs

I found an interesting Chart the other day on the White House Web site,
https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/assets/egov_docs/omb_presidents_it_budget_for_fy_2016_summary_chart.pdf that shows who won and who lost in the IT budget battles.  The biggest winner between budgets for 2015 and 2016 is The Office of Personnel Management - yes, the same one that lost all of our security clearance data and failed to correct even basic things like how they do administrative log-ins across their networks.  They got a 48% increase in their budget.  This is a lot like the people who pay millions for bridge repair after the bridge has fallen into the lake at rush hour.  A little money for fix-up might have saved the bridge.

Looks like the Department of Housing and Urban Development lost the most, 16%.  These are good figures for the guys who do marketing and write proposals, but not much use to anybody else.  Look at the bottom numbers on this chart, and you realize we spend way more on Information Technology than any government should.

I happened to read Linda Cureton's article called 3 Reasons We Don't Need Federal CIOs [http://www.informationweek.com/government/leadership/3-reasons-we-dont-need-federal-cios/a/d-id/1297423]  who used to be CIO for NASA.  I have to agree with the way she looks at this.  There is no "enterprise" in the Fed and every agency runs its IT like it was the only agency in our government.  IT is not a respected profession in the C-suite of the agencies.  It is all about mission, whatever it might be.  But...

Security is still part of the CIO's responsibility and that is not going away.  We have yet to hear from the CIO at OPM, who appeared at her hearing because she had to but said very little after "my comments were added to those of the preceding speaker".  Yes, so she couldn't talk about who was really responsible for the decision to take a chance on the operation of a system that was full of holes.  Next thing we know, her emails will go missing.

The Chinese must be laughing out loud at the incompetence of this agency.  Nobody who got one of those letters from OPM is laughing.