Insights from Steven VanRoekel, the United States CIO

I had the privilege of attending the January 13, 2012 “Fireside Chat: Insight from Steven VanRoekel” and it was an outstanding discussion.  Darren Ash (NRC’s CIO) interviewed Steve in what could be described as one of the most straight-forward conversations I’ve seen in a while with a senior executive.
 

Below are my notes from the event (they are not word for word but captured so that I could frame the conversation based on my mental model)

 

Consumer Electronic Show - What did you see that would impact government?
- 3d visualization, telework, warfighting, connecting people to people, ***Spectrum Challenge - policy need changing, impact on mobility, & spectrum needs to be optimized

 Announcement of the Mobility Roadmap @ Consumer Electronic Show - impact on government
- Think about how to economically acquire (via streamline acquisition) and use mobile devices
- Government should foster applications and not necessarily build applications - Nitin at FAA is a great example

 How will be mobility strategy impact agencies that are ahead of the mobility strategy?
- In 12 months the government should be addressing the applications for mobility
- Apps need to be device agnostic
- Collaboration between agencies is the objective

What can industry do to help government? - Participate in the national dialogue - support AFFIRM & IAC/ACT forums.
- April 2012 - CIO will be kicking off industry activity and getting feedback for the mobility roadmap - gov need help flushing out implementation
- Standards are important- need help to establish standards and drive open standards development (e.g. api)
- Authentication on desktop, mobile devices and BYOD using standard access means needs to be standardized

 What was the White House announcement for today? - Program to streamline government interaction with industry ( have an outside in looking perspective)
- Call on Congress to act (1 new agency and the SBA administrator will be on the cabinet also) to support a consolidation of commerce agencies
- A call center (1800-FED-INFO) for information rather than 20 agencies
- Meta-tagging information is important as a way of doing business
- Focus on the growth of small business

 Talk about the 2 day Federal CIO Offsite - Focus on the perspective on the CIO council & its priorities - Offsite was focused on 2012 and what needs to be accomplished
- Cloud, cyber security, mobile, application development, shared first strategy across government

 Discussion on the 25 Point Plan - The plan has too many #1 priorities; however, each agency is at a different stage of maturity
- Focus on government should be on "continuous improvement"
- Priorities should be focused on the mission of the agency - this is where prioritization starts
- Acquisition strategy and competition should be focused on the strategic objectives of the government and not necessarily price

What's the #1 thing that surprise you as the FED CIO? - technology plays a role in every budget issue and consideration - personal attendance at each budget discussion
- difference between politics and government - focus on making America great

How can industry help the Federal CIO? - Help the government shift to being a platform provider
- Critical areas are: cyber, FedRAMP, mobility, enabling the shared first strategy

 Any key messages for the audience? - Agile development relies on industry and industry should push the government to the next level
- Pressure congress on technology issues

- Q&A Session - Government CIO should form strategic relationship with key vendors that understand their performance requirement and objectives
- Focus on analytics to justify changes in the government and support actionable strategies
- Transparency is critical to letting business leaders understand what IT do for them
- Focus on Semantic web capabilities when developing website - don't use the org chart - focus on data and meta relationships