Last week, I provided an opening keynote at the Management of Government Technology Annual Summit entitled, Driving Government Innovation: Process and Technology to Achieve Success.  Other speakers included a former Chief Information Officer of the Department of Homeland Security, the Director of Enterprise Infrastructure Engineering at the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Chief of Network Security at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

My remarks focused on how the Chief Technology Officer role has three primary objectives tied to the IT vision for DOE’s future.  First, identification of innovative IT solutions that can be deployed across the DOE, second, empowerment of early adopters of innovative IT, and third, advocating those successes internally and externally. 

Many are aware of the changing information technology landscape, as witnessed in trends of greater reliance and usage of mobility and cloud computing.  However, less may be aware of how these technology changes are the results of government-led initiatives.  During my remarks, I highlighted how advances in high performance computing and identity management solutions are shaping the IT landscape at DOE and beyond.

More specific objectives, I highlighted were the development of the DOE’s first-ever Technology Roadmap and the establishment of a related Technology Advisory Board.  In addition to explaining how the Technology Roadmap is an extension of other Department-wide strategic documents, I explained how both the Technology Roadmap and Technology Advisory Board spur innovation by creating opportunities for the DOE to identify common solutions, standards and services to encourage innovation, reduce acquisition costs, and increase interoperability.