Chief officers want more collaboration among interagency councils

The councils representing agencies' chief officers should collaborate more with one another to increase government efficiency and productivity, a panel of top federal leaders said Wednesday.

Within their own departments, chiefs of all stripes -- including acquisition, information technology, human capital and financial management -- work closely with and rely on each other, said a group of CXOs from the Social Security Administration and the Agriculture, Labor and Veterans Affairs departments during an event at the National Press Club. Chief officers also continue to build relationships with their individual counterparts across government on the interagency councils that represent them, although panelists said they would like to see more interaction among the various councils themselves.

"I don't think there is cross-pollination across councils," said Jerry Davis, VA deputy assistant secretary for information security, during the event, produced by Government Executive to honor the past year's top federal chiefs. Davis emphasized that although his role is information security, his job is really about human capital. "I spend a lot of time on the people issue," he said, noting that he talks regularly with his department's chief human capital officer and HR managers.

Reginald Wells, deputy commissioner of SSA's Office of Human Resources, said the Chief Human Capital Officers Council is "finally hitting our stride," and he would like to see that collaboration replicated with the other interagency groups in IT, procurement and financial management.

The cross-pollination already is happening within departments, panelists agreed. Wells said that as his agency's top people person, he is "joined at the hip with IT." Jim Taylor, chief financial officer at Labor, has spent the past year steeped in information technology. Labor is the first Cabinet-level agency to move its entire suite of financial applications to the cloud, a massive project that Taylor shepherded.

There are some efforts to increase collaboration among the CXO councils, officials said. Chris Smith, chief information officer for Agriculture, said the Chief Information Officers Council, codified in the 2002 E-Government Act, has a strong tradition of forming committees to work on specific issues confronting the IT community, such as privacy and accessibility. Smith, who has experience running financial management systems, said the council also works on challenges that cut across the other disciplines, such as procurement and budget issues. Taylor pointed out that the Chief Financial Officers Council, which has been around since 1990, has looked at ways to standardize best practices that touch on all the disciplines across government to help reduce data requirements and increase training for employees.

The need for collaboration and communication is growing, as government adds more chiefs to its ranks. President Obama has designated chiefs of performance, information and technology who oversee the entire executive branch. Last year, he signed into law the Government Performance and Results Modernization Act which requires agencies to appoint senior officials to serve as chief operating and performance improvement officers.