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Celebrating 25 Years

GCN Home > 10/07/02 issue

Where are they now...

Paul Brubaker

By Nancy Ferris, Special to GCN

Paul Brubaker is one of the rare individuals who have held senior positions on Capitol Hill, in the Pentagon and in the IT industry. As a top staff member of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, he was a principal author of the Clinger-Cohen Act of 1996, which governs acquisition and use of federal IT. He also helped shape the Federal Acquisition Reform Act, Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act, the Government Performance and Results Act and the Paperwork Reduction Act.

He was deputy CIO and deputy assistant secretary of Defense for command, control, communications and intelligence in the late 1990s before joining Commerce One as president of its e-government solutions unit. That business became a new company named Aquilent Corp. in Laurel, Md., early this year after a management buyout led by Brubaker. Earlier, he had worked for Litton PRC and Federal Data Corp.

Brubaker’s thoughts: “You might expect me to say that the Information Technology Management Reform Act [known as the Clinger-Cohen Act] was the most significant development over the last 20 years, but I don’t really believe that to be the case. Clinger-Cohen, or something similar, was probably inevitable and served only as a catalyst to generate the kind of meaningful action we are now seeing in government.

“It gave us a language and some tools which are only just now being used to ensure that government focuses not on the bits and bytes of technology but on really applying technology to solve business problems and that can be used to achieve measurable improvements in performance.

“The Clinger-Cohen Act was a result of a confluence of ideas and people who came to Washington at the same time to solve problems. These dedicated people were either too naive or too driven to fail to effect significant and meaningful change. Folks like Steve Kelman, Dee Lee, John Koskinen, Tom Sisti, Ellen Brown, Mark Forman and the scores of people at the General Accounting Office and the agencies and industry made all the difference, and many of these people continue to influence the landscape.

“It is the continued active presence of these people, and the growing number of others, who are joined by the common ideal that government can be agile, responsive and effective, that has been the most significant development in the past 20 years. Building upon this foundation will undoubtedly be the most significant trend for the next 20 years.”

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