Federal CIOs: VARs Are Essential, Survey Says

Federal CIOs are showing an increased reliance on the private sector to achieve IT initiatives, with consolidation strategies and an aging workforce causing many to view outsourcing as part of a new enterprise approach to government IT, according to a recent survey.

The survey of 44 federal CIOs, released by the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA), identified key areas of progress in IT that were made during President Bush's first four years in office, as well as key priorities for his second term. Generally speaking, progress areas focused on IT management, electronic government, IT security and consolidation. Also noted was an increase in data-sharing between federal and state governments.

"A number of agencies, especially those that work across jurisdictions, made progress with data exchange -- getting networks at federal, state and local levels working together," says Paul Wohlleben, partner at Grant Thornton, the accounting and business firm that conducted the survey.

Moving forward, the expected wave of retirement and associated internal skills gaps are causing CIOs to take a more holistic view of their IT workforce, according to the survey. That's good news for VARs, who, in essence, become indispensable.

"While all CIOs regard outsourcing of services as essential for achieving IT goals, a subset has started to think of total staff with contractors as part of one big enterprise," Wohlleben says. "They're looking at the integration of their federal workforce with the outsourced community as an actual strategy."

VARs can benefit from an increasing willingness by CIOs to contract out bundled technology and services solutions that will focus on stated priorities. Those priorities, in some cases, matched noted areas of progress -- indicating that initiatives started still have a way to go. Security and enterprise standardization and consolidation, for example, were listed as main concerns, along with project management and IT governance.

"Governance is the buzzword of 2005," says Olga Grkavac, executive vice president of the ITAA's enterprise solutions division, referring to an organized, hierarchical approach to handling IT decisions. "Last year it emerged, and this year it will play a much bigger role for CIOs at all agencies."