Evans highlights CIO Council plans
The CIO Council's priorities for the coming year figured prominently in Energy Department CIO Karen Evans' presentation at a conference at FOSE today.
The CIO Council's priorities for the coming year figured prominently in Energy Department CIO Karen Evans' presentation to the GCN Management Conference at FOSE today.
Evans, the vice chair of the government's CIO Council, said it would focus on six priorities:
The council also seeks to develop a public key infrastructure policy for authentication of federal employees, Evans said.
"When we get to the heart of the issue there has to be a policy for a common identity [of federal employees across the government]," Evans said.
Evans also spoke about the process of "getting to green" in the president's management agenda, and said that "If you look at the criteria [for getting to green] these are things we should have been doing all along?Green is not an ultimate goal it?means go [to a higher level of management efficiency]."
The government's approach to taxonomy and XML definitions is evolving, Evans said, partly with the assistance of an architecture and infrastructure committee of the CIO council led by OMB chief technology officer Norman Lorentz.
Eventually, the process will lead to standardized transactions across the government, she said.
Evans said that President Bush does talk with cabinet secretaries about their scores on the Management Agenda. "That is a talking point between the secretaries and the president."
Meanwhile, OMB has adjusted its mission somewhat from the past, to focus more of its efforts on management as well as on the budget, Evans said. Citing the importance of the management improvement process, she said, the question now is, "How are we going to institutionalize this process?"
Mark Forman, associate director of OMB for e-government, is working to clarify guidance and establish milestones for management improvement, she said.
In the field of workforce planning, the CIO council has created a committee led by Agriculture Department CIO Ira Hobbs to promote project management skills assessments as required by the Clinger-Cohen Act and to spread project management skills across the government, Evans said.