DHS Special Report | Forward Motion

It was midday on a Wednesday in early spring last year, and the department’s CIOs had gathered in the nondescript federal building near L’Enfant Plaza in Washington for their weekly review of DHS’ most pressing technology issues—a regular meeting that routinely called forth strong opinions.

West, the department’s chief information security officer, was proposing to send an IT security evaluation team—what the CISO office called a “boarding party”—into one of DHS’ “big six” agencies, the headline organizations that field thousands of technology users and hundreds of systems. The idea wasn’t going over well with the CIOs in the room—except for one.

West's group already had conducted a security evaluation at one DHS agency, finding, among other things, that the agency had a poor grasp of its own systems. The CIOs at the meeting, who had pushed back at West’s IT security evaluations from the beginning, vocally condemned the proposal for a second boarding.

Recalling the meeting, West said, “I didn’t say anything, which is unusual for me.”

But in a moment that suggested a sign of hope for West, and DHS, the CIO of that first agency reviewed by the boarding party spoke up to defend and recommend the security evaluation.

“The CIO said the boarding party process was ‘one of the most empowering things that ever happened to me as a CIO. Now, [IT professionals in the agency] are coming to me with their problems,’ ” West recounted.

Charles Church, now CIO of DHS’ Preparedness Directorate, who attended that meeting, recalled that moment and its deeper impact: “It allowed the CIO to reassert control. As a CIO, IT security is one of my two clubs. Procurement control is my other club.”

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