Meet the CIOs: Transportation

Cabinet Agencies

Transportation: Michael Huerta

Michael Huerta

MICHAEL HUERTA
Transportation Department
400 Seventh St. S.W. #10200
Washington, D.C. 20590
Phone: 202-366-5781
Fax: 202-366-0263
E-mail: michael.huerta@ost.dot.gov

Career Highlights:

1993-Present: Associate deputy secretary of Transportation
1989-93: Executive director, Port of San Francisco
1986-89: Director of international trade and commerce, New York City Department of Ports.

IT Budget (fiscal years):
1996: $1.8 billion
1997: $1.7 billion
1998: $1.8 billion (estimated)

Priority Projects:

  • Year 2000 Problem - fixing software date codes, especially in systems for safety-critical missions.
  • Data Center Consolidation - dealing with legacy software and other problems associated with migrating to a client-server environment.
  • Systems Security - ensuring critical information resources are adequately protected.

Biggest Challenges:

"Establishment of an effective CIO organization at DOT. I have been acting CIO since August and have been working to establish an effective, permanent CIO structure. A related challenge is creating the relationships to effectively link IT decisions with strategic planning, budgeting, acquisition and program execution."

On CIOs:

"The CIO must partner with other senior officials such as program managers and the CFO to bring planning, budgeting, performance measurement and architectural management information into the information technology investment decision process."

Hottest Technologies:

"Network applications, especially those involving the Internet, intranets, videoconferencing and mail-enabled systems will be important. Additionally, data warehousing will grow in importance as we make critical information available on a real-time basis to many different users. Finally, global positioning systems and geographical information systems are becoming indispensable to many of our missions."

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