Federal chief information officers have begun to exercise more authority over their department budgets, several CIOs said at a discussion held by AFFIRM in Washington, D.C.

Acting Health and Human Services Department CIO John Teeter described "domains" in his department where he, the CFO, the CTO and others aggregate investment decisions by subject matter--scientific research, human services and administrative systems, for example. The chairs of these domains make IT decisions for the entire department instead of each component making its own decisions.

When asked how HHS employees have responded to this loss of autonomy, Teeter joked, "I've got to tell you, it's great fun," adding that budget constraints served as a catalyst to build consensus. 

Office of Personnel Management CIO Matthew Perry said he co-chairs a chief investment committee that reviews all of OPM's purchases over $250,000. This differs from the previous investment review board, which Perry said looked only at projects that reached a higher cost threshold. Now, the investment committee is "seeing everything," he said.

Teeter also noted that it's important to put a plan in place for how to spend savings, so if one agency in HHS is under budget, he has priorities for where else in the department to spend the money--instead of letting that agency keep it.

Perry said cultural change, in which employees acknowledge that the money they spend is not theirs but the agency's, would overcome resistance to the plan--though he did not say how to institute that cultural change or how to incentivize people to save money on particular projects if they do not get to reallocate the savings for their own work.

For more:
- go to the AFFIRM event webpage

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