New federal CTO to tackle security, productivity

From...

By Heather Harreld

(IDG) -- The federal government's new CTO, Norman Lorentz, decided to return to the federal government on September 11 as he stood in Reagan National Airport in Washington when the Pentagon was attacked by a hijacked airliner.

Now, one of his two primary duties as the first federal CTO will be making sure that the technical teams tackling the monumental problem of homeland security are applying the best technology, he said Friday.

His overarching goal will be to help the federal government gain some of the massive productivity gains the private sector has gained via IT.

In addition to security, he will also be overseeing the technology used for the Bush Administration's 24 e-government initiatives designed to tap IT to provide the high-level customer service often commonplace in the private sector to the federal government, notorious for its customer service shortfalls. Altogether, the projects he will be spearheading from the technology front boast a budget of $45 billion.

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He will making sure that the lead agencies for the e-government initiatives, called managing partners, are leveraging the right technology to solve their business problems, he said. These initiatives cut across the federal government and will use Internet technology to streamline service to citizens, reduce paperwork burdens on businesses, and apply commercial best practices to improve government operating efficiency.

"The primary issues are to improve the way we manage the business by applying technology," Lorentz said. "As the CTO, I own none of the technology. The technology is owned by the managing partners. They are my customers, [and] my job is to make them successful. They are going to be held accountable for specific business case outcomes."

Specifically, Lorentz said he will be making sure the technology that's proposed for the e-government and IT initiatives are robust, reliable, and off-the-shelf. In addition, he will be ensuring that the partners do the process work first so that they are not just throwing technology at existing processes, he added.

"We have more technology than we can use right now, [although] that's not to say there won't be specific requirements based on specific needs," he said. "We're not going to unplug anything that is effective at this point until there is a better plan for integration. In a very methodical, thoughtful, process-based way we do have the authority to stop unsuccessful projects and programs."

To tackle these goals, Lorentz plans on leveraging his experience as former CTO at the U.S. Postal Service, where he orchestrated the agency's Y2K conversion and led its efforts to put a new system into place that measured performance and aligned technology investments to key metrics. His other technology experience, which spans 30 years, includes working as CTO of Dice, an online job board, and working in telecommunications at US West and Bell Atlantic.

On the homeland security front, Lorentz will report to former Gov. Tom Ridge, the Administration's point man for homeland security. One of the biggest opportunities for improvement in the IT security arena is promoting cohesive security policy development and implementation, Lorentz said.

"We're going to make sure we're applying the same security approaches across our key initiatives," he said.

As he moves forward, Lorentz said he will work with all existing boards and councils, including those that serve as a liaison to the private sector.

Harris Miller, president of the Information Technology Association of America, in Arlington, Virginia, said the government needs someone to focus on best practices in the private sector and try to move those into the public sector.

"The whole challenge ... is that we consistently still have these stovepipe problems in terms of the agencies themselves not being able to be well-integrated," Miller said.