Homeland Security CIOs issue list of priorities

The Homeland Security Department's council of chief information officers on Tuesday revealed its list of areas the department should focus on in 2004.

The council identified the following eight areas that DHS should prioritize this year: sharing information; mission rationalization, or determining the most cost effective way to meet objectives; information and technology security; developing a single information and technology infrastructure; developing a better enterprise architecture; using portfolio management techniques; good governance; and managing the employees who support information and technology programs.

The list of priorities has not been officially approved by the department's leadership, but should not come up against resistance, said Lee Holcomb, DHS' chief technology officer, during a panel discussion hosted by the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association.

"We want to vet these priorities with our business process owners," Holcomb said. "We have enough interaction with our business partners that I don't think any of these will be dramatically changed. But this is what we believe from our perspective are the real priorities."

The council was created in July 2002 before DHS formally organized in February 2003. Members said progress is already being made on several priorities, while others are lagging.

For example, IT managers created an enterprise architecture for the department in less than five months, with a new version of the architecture slated for release this summer, Holcomb said.

"I don't think any other federal government agency has ever done a complete top to bottom enterprise architecture in four months," Holcomb said. "It could be a lot deeper and cover a lot more technical areas, but I think in one year that's a pretty impressive accomplishment."

Holcomb acknowledged, however, that DHS lags in IT security, receiving a failing grade on the 2003 Federal Computer Security Scorecard released in December 2003.

"We got the lowest grade from the federal government in the recent scorecard, and we're going to change that," Holcomb said.

One of the most challenging tasks to accomplish will be creating a single, integrated IT infrastructure for the department, said Patrick Schambach, deputy administrator for information technology for the Transportation Security Administration.

"The whole notion of [going] to one infrastructure is a frightening prospect for many of us," said Schambach, who added that managers within the department are moving in the right direction.

"We have gone from questioning the legitimacy of doing that to looking forward in anticipation of how we're going to get it done," Schambach said. "That's the progress that we've made so far…the attitudes around the table that have to change to get to one infrastructure is by far the one area that I would highlight as an accomplishment to date."

Barry West, chief information officer for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said members had little disagreement over the list of priorities.

"The goals that we outlined mushroomed to the top quickly," West said. "We didn't have a whole lot of debate; these priorities came to the top."