Ed Meagher currently serves as the Director of Strategic Initiatives for Health Affairs with SRA International's
Global Health Group, where he is responsible for providing leadership and innovation within SRA's Global Health Sector.

He brings 24 years of experience in government IT to the table in his work. Meagher served as the Deputy Chief Information Officer for the Department of the Interior and the Chief Technology Officer for the Department of Veterans Affairs. Prior to that, he was the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Information Technology in the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). In this Q&A with FierceGovernmentIT editor Judi Hasson, Meagher talks about some of the hurdles the new administration faces.

JH: What's the biggest IT challenge facing the new administration?

EM: The biggest challenge facing this administration is how to reconcile its desire to move quickly to use the latest technologies to advance their interests in greater transparency, innovation, citizen engagement and cost effectiveness with the actual current state of information technology in government.

The reality of the situation with much of the IT systems that actually run the federal government is that they are old, stove-piped, and difficult to modernize. Putting a patina of Web 2.0 functionality on top of these older systems will not solve the underlying problem that our federal IT plumbing has been neglected. Finding the balance between making a down payment on promises to improve transparency and engaging citizen in the business of government and doing the hard work of modernizing the workhorse IT systems that drive it will be the greatest challenge

JH: Is the administration prepared to handle the massive undertaking of turning paper health records into electronic ones?

EM: No, not yet but they can get prepared quickly. The key factor will be leadership. There are several paths forward. This topic has been debated, analyzed, studied, piloted and prototyped to death. There is no one perfect solution or approach to solving these issues. What is needed is the leadership to make a decision, explain it, and then pursue it with clear guidance, aggressive timelines and metrics and strong incentives. The blowback to this approach will be enormous and virulent, but it is the only way forward. Letting the market decide has led us to the fractured, ineffective, and inefficient situation we have today.

JH: What do agencies have to do to deal with electronic records, especially the VA and HHS?

EM: What has been lacking is a single set of standards that all agencies must conform to over time. In the absence of such standards, each department, agency and sub-agency has gone its own way out of necessity. The approach we have now assumes a continued lack of leadership from government, and so we have the "Massively Parallel Interface" approach to translating among and between the various approaches. This is highly inefficient and ultimately ineffective.

JH: Is IT security the biggest issue government is facing, and how can an IT executive get up-to-speed with the skills needed to help fight cybersecurity attacks?

EM: Cybersecurity remains one of the greatest challenges to the IT professional and to the government as a whole. As we have seen repeatedly over the last decade, we remain vulnerable to attack. Until we start "baking in" security to all new systems we develop at an architectural level, we will be playing catch up with the bad guys out there who mean to harm us. While some of our detection methods have improved and our responsiveness to attack has been upgraded, we are still in a reactionary mode. 

JH: What would you tell a new government IT hire these days? What's the best place to work and what kind of skills does he/she need?

EM: Government service is one of the greatest opportunities available to young new government hire. If they are willing to apply themselves, they will enjoy greater responsibility sooner than their peers, faster advancement, and higher job satisfaction than in the private sector. I think the compatibility of the mission of the department or agency with the individual employee's values determines what constitutes the best place to work. If you can be passionate about your mission, then that is going to be a great place to work, as for the particular skill sets that will be determined by the job, but the most important concept are always look to improve yourself. Your career is in your hands.

JH: What will be different in this new administration than the last eight years in IT? 

EM: I think this administration will be looking to innovate with new solutions and new approaches rather than simply looking to incrementally improve old solutions and approaches. Hopefully a balance will be struck between these two approaches.