A nother chief information officer is calling it a career.

Jerry Williams, the CIO at the Education Department’s Office of Federal Student Aid, will leave government March 31 after about 31 years of service.

“There is no good time to leave government, but if you are going to do it, it’s like diving in to the pool so all the thinking about it doesn’t help and eventually you have to just jump in the water,” Williams said in an interview.

Williams will not be going too far away. He’ll become the CEO of an IT services firm called Ryan.

“My decision to go to Ryan is a result of a conversation between me and the owner and I just decided that this is the one I like to do,” he said.

Who will be the interim FSA CIO has yet to be determined, according to Williams.

He becomes another in a long-list of long-time federal technology officials to leave government.

During his career, Williams worked in seven different federal organizations. He’s been CIO at FSA since April 2013.

Before coming to FSA, Williams was the CIO at the Department of Housing and Urban Development. He also worked at the departments of Agriculture and Interior, the Small Business Administration, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Office of Management and Budget in senior IT and financial management positions.

Williams said he plans to take a month off before starting his new position with Ryan.

While Williams’ decision to retire was his own, a key procurement figure at the Veterans Affairs Department saw the handwriting on the wall and called it quits.

Glenn Haggstrom, the VA’s principal executive director in the Office of Acquisition, Logistics and Construction, stepped down quietly March 25 after pressure mounted over cost overruns at a VA hospital in Colorado.

While Haggstrom was not the program manager or the procurement official for the Aurora, Colorado, project that is hundreds of millions of dollars over budget and years behind schedule, he was the supervising official over all of the agency’s construction portfolio.

Reps. Jeff Miller (R-Fla.), the chairman of the Veterans Affairs Committee, and Jared Polis (D-Colo.) were pleased to see Haggstrom leave government. Polis’ release was brief: “Good riddance.”

Miller wrote that Haggstrom tried to do a good job but didn’t succeed, and he shouldn’t be rewarded by receiving his full retirement benefits.

“Every single member of VA’s top leadership is fully aware of the department’s construction problems, yet none made any attempt to fire Haggstrom — a fact that speaks volumes about the department’s commitment to accountability,” Miller wrote. “To be sure, Haggstrom is not the only VA employee responsible for the department’s construction failures. More housecleaning will surely be needed if the department is to ever get its construction affairs in order. If there is anything in current law preventing VA from swiftly holding its employees accountable, the department should say so, because the parade of VA executives who retire or resign in lieu of any form of accountability is nothing short of insulting to veterans and taxpayers.”

Haggstrom served in government for 34 years, including the last six-plus at VA. He also was the director of the Office of Procurement and Property Management for the Department of Agriculture and served in the Air Force, rising to become a second lieutenant.

C ongressman Will Hurd is flexing his technology background.

First, the freshman Republican from Texas took the reins of the new Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on IT, where his priorities include cybersecurity, privacy and how best to bring emerging technologies into the government.

Now, he’s focusing on the Homeland Security Department.

In his new two-page bill, the Department of Homeland Security IT Duplication Reduction Act, Hurd is calling on the DHS chief information officer to reduce the number of IT systems. He said FEMA alone has more than 600 IT systems.

“Call me crazy, but it just doesn’t make sense to have one agency using multiple IT systems that do the same thing. That’s a ridiculous waste of taxpayer dollars,” Hurd said in a statement.

The bill would require the DHS CIO to submit a report to the House and Senate oversight committees that details the number of IT systems, an assessment of the number of systems that are duplicative, and a strategy for reducing the redundant systems and how much cost savings or cost avoidance is possible.

DHS IT duplication is not a new issue. Former DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano set up efficiency review boards to address this and similar issues.

From that, former DHS CIO Richard Spires and current CIO Luke McCormack have been taking specific actions to reduce the IT overlap.

Spires, for example, consolidated DHS data centers down to two and offered a series of services, including email-as-a-service, storage-as-a-service and computing-as-a-service.

McCormack is continuing many of those initiatives. He said at the recent AFCEA Homeland Security Conference that DHS is making progress to reduce the number of its learning management systems under its HR IT initiative. DHS found components are managing more than 130 human-resources systems, including more than nine learning management systems on a daily basis.

“We actually have gone to initial operating capability with [the learning management system] and that has been in place for some time. We have the capability up and running so we are going through the process of starting to migrate the various components to that end-state configuration,” McCormack said in a recent interview. “We will get the learning management and then the performance management under our belt, and then we will go back through the architecture and look at where our next set of opportunities are.”

Hurd’s bill was one of seven from freshmen on the Homeland Security Committee to introduce DHS oversight bills. The bills address a range of issues from Freedom of Information Act efficiency to border security technology.

One other bill worth mentioning is the Homeland Security Headquarters Consolidation Accountability Act.

In Rep. Mark Walker’s (R-N.C.) legislation, the DHS secretary would have to submit a report to the congressional committees listing current plans, assessing the agency’s office space needs and a plan for the St. Elizabeth’s consolidation initiative, which includes estimated costs and schedule, as well as potential savings.

“The Department of Homeland Security’s headquarters consolidation project has been mismanaged, skyrocketing past its cost and completion estimates,” Walker said in a release. “This bill will fully codify the recommendations outlined by the Government Accountability Office and provide improved management of the project and increased transparency to the American people.”

Of course, many of the problems with the St. E’s project can be traced back to repeated program funding cuts or underfunding by Congress.

In September, House Homeland Security Committee members debated the future of the program, but GAO found the funding gap between what was requested and what was received from 2009 through 2014 was more than $1.6 billion. This post is part of Jason Miller’s Inside the Reporter’s Notebook feature. Read more from this edition of Jason’s Notebook.

The federal government’s procurement system is not designed for optimal performance.

That was the understatement of the week by Anne Rung, the administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy.

But Rung, who was speaking at the quarterly President’s Management Advisory Board meeting in Washington Friday, wasn’t just complaining about the situation that has led to more than 3,300 contracting offices across the world, huge price discrepancies among agencies when buying similar goods and services, and huge duplication across the government.

“I think a lot of well-intentioned acquisition reform legislation has had some unintended consequences,” Rung said. “At one point, in [the Clinton administration’s] Reinventing Government, they called for an end to government monopolies and they were talking about different functional areas. But one of the areas they were referring to was the General Services Administration being the sole entity to purchase IT acquisitions. So, they wanted to bring that authority back to the agencies. One of the unintended consequences was that we have this massive proliferation of duplicative contracts across government. So, we now have this model that we have to do something with.”

Rung’s perspective opens the door a little bit on the thinking by the Obama administration about what’s driving category management.

Few doubt the government could be more efficient. Few would argue that initiatives such as strategic sourcing or spend management wouldn’t benefit the government.

The question that continues to come back is how to address the industrial base that has grown up under this flawed and broken model.

OFPP says category management would help control about $270 billion across 10 super categories, which are the basis for the category management initiative.

“No one has tried it on this scale,” Rung said. “In the U.K., they are talking about $14 billion in spend. Boeing and other companies like Macy’s are much smaller. So how do you really tackle $270 billion in common spend? How do you bring some organization and transparency into this space?’

Beth Cobert, OMB’s deputy director for management, said the data around these 10 super-categories is the key to changing agency buying behavior.

As part of that data collection effort, Rung said OFPP spent the last three months coming up with a methodology to track spending across these 10 categories.

OFPP created a three-tiered approach, with level three being a mature approach, which includes a governmentwide solution with full-time category management.

The first one to start reaching for tier three will be IT. OMB is hiring a full-time IT category manager with a goal of having that person in place by July. It also launched an interagency software team and by June will issue standard configurations for 80 percent of the requirements for laptops and desktops. OMB also will issue IT policy guidance by July around category management.

“We want to set a goal for ourselves as part of a dashboard that we present to the President, who asked for quarterly where we are with spend under management. We think that will be a good incentive for our agencies,” Rung said.

President Barack Obama met with GSA and OFPP in February to talk about category management.

Rung said the first job of this new category manager will be to dig through the spending data to get an even more accurate total for IT spending.

“This is a very rough cut. I know this is not accurate,” she said. “We don’t know the spend. This $270 billion will change.”

Ellen Herbst, the Commerce Department chief financial officer, said her agency took on the idea of category management internally in a cost-savings effort.

“The cost avoided, if you will, was not obvious enough to the individual program managers on the mission side. We recognized we need to do a much better communications job to sell them on the benefits,” she said. “It takes work to collect this data, come up with requirements that everybody will agree to and, frankly, force people down the chute of these contracts.”

And the data Commerce discovered was dramatic. Herbst said 88 percent of the agency’s transactions were under the Simplified Acquisition Threshold—meaning less than $150,000—but that only accounted for 18 percent of the total spend.

She said what the acquisition folks saw from this data is the ability to let someone else deal with these commodity buys so they can focus on the more complex, mission- critical procurements. Herbst said these changes are letting Commerce put its best people on its most critical, complex buys instead of having them focus on the little things.

Laura Stanton, director of program management for the Common Acquisition Platform at the General Services Administration, said the IT hallway under the Category Management effort is slowly building users and information. She said the hallway is seeing between 75 and 100 new users a week.

“We are planning on putting in tools and digital services that would allow somebody to immediately go into the transaction area,” she said. “We are looking at how do we build this in a thoughtful way. How do we also put the tools in place so somebody could put together their cost estimates, using data from other agencies, so they can see if they are paying more or out of sync with others?”

Rung said one of OFPP’s metrics for the success of category management will be how many contracting officers and others take advantage of all the data in the category hallways.

“I recognize some of us are only here for a few years. How do we institutionalize category management?” she said. “It’s at least a five-year process. So, are there regulations we should be thinking about? How do we embed this within the organizations?”

History has shown the best way to institutionalize anything in to government is through a combination of policy/oversight and a true demonstration of value, which must come soonest.

One of the busiest chief information officers in government is looking for some help. Rick Holgate, the CIO for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, is hiring a new chief technology officer. Holgate is a well- respected and active player in federal community at large, while also modernizing ATF’s IT infrastructure.

The ATF CTO, which was once held by Andy Blumenthal up until 2011, is part adviser/visionary and part technology operations guru.

The candidate will have the opportunity to oversee cyber operations, develop IT strategic plans and ensures mission critical IT is implemented and working.

Applications are due March 26.

T here was an awful lot of movement in the federal IT community over the last few weeks.

None may be more surprising than Sonny Hashmi’s decision to leave as the chief information officer of the General Services Administration. Now we know who made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.

Box, the emerging secure file sharing company, hired Hashmi in what one industry source called a federal strategist role.

It’s not 100 percent clear what that means, but several government and industry sources said Box has been aggressively recruiting feds to improve their federal presence.

According to Box’s website, the company doesn’t list any federal clients, and only one contractor, GovPlace, an IT enterprise solutions contractor. Hashmi becomes the second federal connection. In May, Box announced Aneesh Chopra, the former federal chief technology officer, was on board to serve as a special adviser in the company’s healthcare and life sciences practice.

The other big mover is Greg Godbout, the executive director of GSA’s 18F. Sources said he’s heading to the Environmental Protection Agency to be its CTO.

Emails to Godbout were not returned, and his staff remained mum on his next plans, just tweeting that he’s off to another agency.

There are two other moves of note in the federal IT community as well.

Jonathan Kraden is heading to GSA’s Office of Governmentwide Policy in yet another move to reinvigorate the office.

Kraden comes to OGP after spending the last eight years as a staff member for the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

He was influential in the Federal IT Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA) legislation, improper payments and acquisition bills during his time on the Hill.

At OGP, Kraden will be director of customer coordination and communication, where he will work with the CIO community and help GSA to meet the government’s needs around identity management.

Quietly, OGP is seeing a resurgence, specifically around identity management and other IT policy issues. For years, OGP acted as the right hand of OMB’s E- Government Office. But over the last six or so years, reorganizations and different leadership priorities basically left OGP without an IT bent.

Don’t be surprised to see more from OGP over the next year, including leading an aggressive effort around identity management policies.

Finally, the Education Department promoted Steve Grewal to deputy CIO from chief information security officer.

Grewal spent the last three years as Education’s CISO where he led the effort to launch an internal security operations center.

Education has been trying to raise its cyber posture over last few years. In the latest Federal Information Security Management Act report to Congress, OMB reported Education received a score of 91 percent, up from 89 percent in 2013.

In the almost 20 years since the Clinger-Cohen became law, the government’s reliance on hardware, software and all that comes with technology is as integral as lights, telephones and air conditioning. The government ceases to work well without these basic necessities of business.

Despite this recognition of IT’s, and even cybersecurity’s, vital role in government, the same group of executives who complained and pushed back 20 years ago against giving CIOs a seat at the table are at again.

Many federal chief financial officers are not happy with the Federal IT Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA) and the way the Office of Management and Budget is considering implementing the law.

Several sources said OMB is getting pushback on its draft guidance from several CFOs who don’t want to cede budgetary authority to CIOs.

“CFOs are worried that FITARA is taking away their providence,” said one industry expert, who requested anonymity in order to talk about the draft guidance. “CFOs are worried that having CIOs look into their tin would encroach on their prerogatives. It’s a big mistake for the CFOs to be so narrow-minded.”

This isn’t the first time CFOs have complained about giving up turf to CIOs.

Sources said during the drafting of the Clinger-Cohen Act implementation guidance back in 1995-96, CFOs released something called at the time the “CFO Manifesto.” It basically called on CIOs to answer directly to CFOs, even though Clinger-Cohen told agencies to ensure CIOs answered to the secretary of the agency.

CFOs pushed back again during the later years of the President George W. Bush administration when OMB tried to give CIOs more authorities for IT spending through a new policy. In the end, that 2009 memo ended being watered down to please the CFOs, among other constituents.

“CFOs always gave us push back,” said one former federal IT official. “They were always a tough group to work with. They view the world very black and white because for them it’s all about dollars and cents. So now what you have is the CFO always owned the budget and what you are now doing is changing that dynamic and they have to work with one of their peers, who will have input into the budget.”

While OMB drafts the implementation guidance, we do know that FITARA calls for CIOs to have a high degree of oversight of IT spending, which may include reprogramming and acquisition authorities. We also know that FITARA requires civilian cabinet and major agency CIOs to be appointed by the President, and therefore given a greater “seat at the table.”

Those two issues are the heart of the concerns that some CFOs are relating back to OMB.

One former federal CFO said the historical problem has been the unwillingness by some to give up their budget authority to anyone else.

“It can mean now CIOs are dealing directly with OMB, especially if they have to certify the annual IT budget submissions. They also are talking to congressional staffs about IT budgets,” the former CFO said. “The thing that makes your job as a CFO harder is when component agencies have direct lines to Congress, and they go around you to push their own agenda. Now they could have an IT person do that, and not the CFO or deputy secretary or secretary, which are the ones that are entrusted to make these decisions about budgets.”

Sources said even though FITARA is law, the CFOs are trying to get OMB to reduce the budgetary impact a CIO could have over the IT spending.

But the federal IT official said the budget in-and-of-itself is not the answer by far to the challenges the government faces with IT projects.

“If the CFOs were smart, they’d be looking at this specific thing and say thank goodness I have a partner now,” the former official said. “When you look at expenditures and risk, they need a partner and the savvy ones will embrace it, while the ones of traditional government hierarchy will fight it. But what CIOs really need is execution authority, which isn’t necessarily budget authority. If the budget control was a panacea, then why doesn’t the Veterans Affairs Department have a better IT shop?”

Congress gave the VA CIO oversight over all of the agency’s IT budget in 2005, and that is seen by many as the model that FITARA tried to emulate.

The former federal CFO offered similar insights from their time in government. A good relationship with the CIO is imperative and can really make both the IT and finance function much more impactful in helping the agency meet its mission.

“I can’t understand the push back,” said another former federal IT official. “This isn’t a zero sum game. If you operate collaboratively, everybody will be strengthened. The CIO’s role will not grow at expense of acquisition or finance officers. All are more influential if they are united.”

OMB continues to work on the implementation guidance. Source said it’s going through several levels of review and could be out by late April or early May.

Some said there is a growing movement to ensure that OMB Director Shaun Donovan signs off on the guidance so its importance is clear throughout the political ranks of the government.

An interesting opportunity popped up at the intersection of technology and education. The National Defense University is looking for a new chief information officer.

The CIO’s job is pretty typical, focusing on governance and management issues as well as modernization, reliability and security of IT assets. But if you dig a bit deeper into the position, a presentation from May 2014 by Army Col. Stewart Liles, who seems to be the CIO who’s leaving, highlights a range of opportunities starting with a cloud based infrastructure for operational and academic needs, a mobility approach to include bring-your-own-device and an overall effort to restructure NDU’s technology environment.

Applications are due March 13.

K athy Stack retired after 34 years in government on Feb. 20. Most people probably never heard of her, saw her speak or even understand the impact she had on the management of government.

But Stack, who spent the last 28 years at the Office of Management and Budget, was the quiet leader behind the move toward evidence-based decision making over the last few years.

Stack, whose official title was adviser for evidence-based innovation at OMB, led a staff of three people to help agencies use data to make better decisions.

“I was a point in my career over the last year where I said, ‘You know, I’m tired of the grind and there are certain important things that have to get done in government and I can either do it from the outside or do it from the inside, and I was given the opportunity to try and do it from the inside in terms of this focus on evidence,'” Stacks said in May 2014 during an interview on the IBM Business of Government Hour, which runs on Federal News Radio.

Stack spent six years at the Education Department before coming to OMB where worked on budget policy and management issues.

“As I say farewell, I want to thank you for making my work at OMB so rewarding and so fun,” Stack wrote in an email to colleagues, which Federal News Radio obtained. “You’ve helped turn abstract policy ideas into real-life examples of how the Federal government can innovate in ways that help other levels of government, non- profits, and the public use data and evidence to improve their decisions. Our tiered evidence programs, Partnership Fund pilots, Pay for Success, SSI PROMISE, and Performance Partnership Pilots are just of few of the new program designs we shaped together that are beginning to yield exciting results. In every one of these examples, collaboration across agency lines and levels of government and with non- governmental organizations has been the key to success.”

Stack said she was not heading off into the sunset of retirement, and likely will continue working in the federal community as she has some “intriguing options ahead.”

Along with Stack, Charles McClam, the Agriculture Department’s deputy CIO, retired earlier this month after more than 38 years in government.

“Yes, it has been a long and professionally challenging and rewarding journey; and now I will begin the next chapter of my life building on the past 38 books to write the finale,” McClam said in an email to colleagues.

McClam has been deputy CIO at USDA since 2009 and also worked at the Small Business Administration, the IRS, the Defense Department and the CIA during his career.

Finally, the Environmental Protection Agency finally gets their woman. Ann Dunkin, after waiting for more than a year, is the permanent CIO at EPA.

She had been nominated by President Barack Obama twice and the Senate wouldn’t approve her to be the agency’s CIO and assistant administrator in the Office of Environmental Information.

So EPA officials uncoupled the CIO and assistant administrator position and made Dunkin the permanent CIO.

An EPA spokeswoman said Dunkin remains nominated to be the assistant administrator, and in the meantime, Renee Wynn will continue to function in an acting role.

Dunkin told the Women of Washington program on Federal News Radio that she’s excited to finally be in the permanent role.

A year after canceling its $2 billion training contract, the Office of Personnel Management is getting closer to finalizing what that new procurement vehicle will look like.

The General Services Administration is reviewing more than 200 responses to a request for information that closed in January as it builds toward the release of a draft request for proposals in March.

Jim Ghiloni, program director for GSA’s professional services program management office, said the Human Capital and Training Solutions (HCaTS) contract will be part of the human capital category management initiative, which is being led by OPM.

The Office of Management and Budget estimated agencies spend about $3.6 billion a year on human capital services such as training, human resources services and specialized educational services.

Ghiloni said generally speaking throughout the RFI vendors asked a lot of questions about which North American Industrial Classification System (NAICS) code the contract will come under, the key service areas, labor categories, past performance and the evaluation criteria.

“We are reviewing all of that as we anticipated we’d need to do and the results of that effort will appear in the draft RFP,” Ghiloni said in an interview with Federal News Radio. “We expect the final RFP to be out in May, and get these contracts awarded by the end of the calendar year. We are still on schedule right now.”

GSA is considering two HCaTS vehicles, one unrestricted and one only for small businesses.

GSA and OPM are teaming up on HCaTS after OPM’s initial attempt to replace the Training and Management Assistance (TMA) contract that failed in February 2014.

TMA, which has helped agencies meet human capital requirements for much of the last 25 years, remains in effect through 2017.

Ghiloni said HCaTS is organized around five broad categories:

• Training and development services
• Human capital strategy services
• Human resources and human resource management temporary services
• Information technology support of human resources systems
• Organizational performance improvement

Ghiloni said the RFI provided significant feedback on those five areas, and GSA will reflect those improvements in the draft and eventually final RFPs.

Along with HCaTS, Ghiloni is running the OASIS professional services governmentwide acquisition contract.

He said the first task order awards should happen in a matter of weeks as agencies including the Army, Navy, Air Force, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Customs and Border Protection, Interior Department and the Agriculture Department have all issued RFQs against the contract.

Ghiloni said the Air Force, which signed an agreement with GSA in December 2013 to spend at least $500 million on the contract in the first 18 months, is responsible for almost half of all RFQs so far.

It still amazes me that a conference with more than 500 attendees can be labeled off the record or not for attribution.

But it happened last week. My goal is not to give the folks who run the conference any free publicity, since they make it difficult for journalists to do their jobs, but let me just say it’s focused in the telecommunications market and for years it’s brought in some of the best government speakers together.

The fact that’s it’s not-for-attribution not only bewilders me in this day and age with instant access from Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and many other options where anyone can automatically post details from your phone or tablet, but also leads me to question why federal executives would show up for such an event given the ridiculous promise from the organizers.

So now that is off my chest, here’s the news from that unnamed conference:

The General Services Administration extended the Networx contract for three years and released the draft request for proposals for the first major piece of the Network Services 2020 vehicle Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions (EIS) on Feb. 28.

An industry source who attended this unnamed conference said GSA presenters, Fred Haines, Mary Davie, Amando Gavino, Bill Lewis, Jon Johnson and Dave Peters detailed their plans around NS2020, regional contracts, the new AcqServe portal and the new commercial satellite contract that’s coming soon.

The source said the room full of vendors were most interested in the EIS draft RFP and GSA’s timeline for the final RFP.

GSA said comments on the draft RFP will be due by March 31. Then, they will hold an industry day in May and release the final RFP by July.

EIS will be a five-year base with two five-year options for a total of 15 years, and GSA is hoping for more than the five telecommunications providers currently under the Networx program.

When GSA does release the draft RFP, vendors must register on to receive some of the sensitive documents around location of buildings and bandwidth requirements.

What’s most interesting about the EIS program so far is the fact GSA seems to be listening to industry. The industry source said GSA cut back the number of mandatory services to four: voice, Ethernet, virtual private network and managed network solutions. At the same time, GSA also is simplifying the back-end infrastructure requirements for capabilities such as billing, ordering and inventory controls.

The changes, in part, are a reaction to the arduous transition that came under Networx, and the desire to have more competition under EIS.

As for the current Networx contract, which now runs through 2020, agencies spent more than $1.5 billion last year, up 13 percent over 2013.

The biggest areas of growth have been around unified communications, bandwidth and mobility services.