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GCN Home > 09/11/06 issue

Steve Cooper | DHS’ first CIO joined government after attacks

Cooper was first CIO of the Homeland Security Department

By Wilson P. Dizard III, GCN Staff

The American journey took a sharp turn on 9/11. For Steve Cooper, the first CIO of the Homeland Security Department, that journey began with an unexpected sea cruise.

“I was a participant in an executive forum on a cruise ship in New York harbor,” Cooper reminisced in a recent interview. “We weren’t aware that anything was going on. Then a lot of cell phones went off, with relatives asking if we were OK.”

The nonplussed passengers on the British-flagged ship started watching the live events on BBC TV, which carried an inset of the Cable News Network’s live coverage.

“As we watched, people were confused,” Cooper continued. “We didn’t understand that it was a live broadcast. [The passengers] realized that when the second plane crashed into the second tower. Then people got concerned.”

A Coast Guard officer boarded the ship shortly after that and ordered it out to sea. Cooper and the other passengers landed unexpectedly in Boston a day later. He made his way back by car to upstate New York, where he worked as the CIO of Corning Inc. in Corning.

“I was pretty angry about the whole thing,” Cooper said. “I asked my wife if I could participate in America’s response to terrorism, and she said, ‘Go for it.’”

Cooper’s path to the leadership of DHS technology began with a meeting in the White House with Tom Ridge, who then led the White House homeland security office.

When Ridge began as DHS’ first secretary, he brought Cooper along as CIO.

Ridge proclaimed a readiness agenda. But in the background, IT specialists scrambled to weave together the department’s systems. The public counted 22 DHS agencies, new, old or reorganized, while insiders used the working figure of 29 agencies, Cooper said.

That confusion extended to the task of counting the number of IT systems within DHS, which numbered in the hundreds. In some cases, frustrated employees created their own wildcat databases.

Some agencies, such as the Coast Guard, entered DHS with complete, functioning IT networks, infrastructure and personnel. But startups like the Science and Technology Directorate had no IT assets at all.

More news on related topics: Homeland Security, IT Management



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