Where CIOs boot up

He didn’t try to describe the benefits of two-factor authentication or say anything about data warehouses. Instead, he went back to one of many lessons learned from his stint at boot camp—CIO Boot Camp, that is.

Burns kept the bits and bytes in the server room and brought the business needs to the boardroom. At this early December meeting, nearly a month after the CIO’s version of Parris Island ended, he described what data they were trying to protect and what needs to be done to protect it, and he did it in simple, easy to understand terms.

“I focused on the business processes the user follows,” said Burns, who has been deputy CIO since last September. “There was interest and support of what we need to do from the senior managers and we are still working toward it.”

Burns’ ability to keep senior executives’ eyes from glazing over when he talks about enterprise architecture, security and privacy are among the skills he and other CIOs need to realize in order to be successful. And for new CIOs and deputy CIOs, especially, the breadth of these skills can be overwhelming and unfamiliar. Federal IT managers must be one part visionary, one part technologist and one part salesman to affect their agency’s mission and ensure funding.

For Burns, maybe it was something Richard Burk, the Office of Management and Budget’s chief architect, said: “Enterprise architecture may have started as an IT thing, but it became clear that it helps gets business done.” Or maybe it was something one of the other panelists said during the two-day Boot Camp, sponsored by the federal CIO Council. No matter what phrase or idea stuck in Burns’ head, he accomplished one of the main goals of the education sessions: Recognize the skills of a successful agency IT manager.

More news on related topics: Business Process Management, Management, IT Management