WASHINGTON, March 20 (UPI) -- Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has granted new authorities to his chief information officer over the 22 agencies merged into the new department.
To help integrate the information-technology networks of those so-called legacy agencies and ensure the department's $3 billion annual IT budget is prudently spent, "we need to have a strong information officer who is empowered to make decisions, control spending and ensure consistency," Chertoff told technology executives in Northern Virginia last week.
He issued a management directive that required each legacy agency to submit its IT budget to the department's chief information officer, Scott Charbo, who will make recommendations to the secretary for the final departmental budget request.
The chief information officer will also have to sign off on any IT acquisition larger than $2.5 million to ensure it is compatible with the integration plan. This follows the creation of two centralized procurement vehicles for purchasing all the department's IT goods and services -- Eagle, for services launched last September, and First Source, for software, hardware and other goods launched earlier this year.
The directive also means that agency heads must now get Charbo's approval of their hires for agency chief information officer posts. The agency chief information officers will also have their performance plans and ratings -- and the annual pay rise that goes with them -- set and approved by Charbo and his successors.
Chertoff cautioned that the move would not necessarily be welcomed by all the department's components -- some of which have decades -- or even, in the case of the U.S. Coast Guard, centuries -- of independent existence prior to their merger into the department.
"This unification and strengthening of core management will not be easy. Some of the components will not be used to this level of centralized coordination, particularly as it relates to IT systems."
"But," he said "we must make this happen, because it is necessary to get to the next level of effective and cost-effective management."
