I am proud and excited to be selected as the department’s chief information officer. I think my 27 years of working in Interior from the field office to the headquarters level will help me do a good job by understanding many of the issues you face.

This is a time of unprecedented opportunity and challenge in information technology. IT is being used more than ever to do our work and it will continue to grow in the future. When managed well, IT can help us do our jobs better, faster, cheaper, and easier.

This is also a time of unprecedented risk. In the 48 hours before I wrote this article, a large federal agency, a whole state government, and a major corporation all reported large-scale exposures of their employees and customers Social Security numbers and other personal information.

IT staff need to understand the mission and needs of the people they support. Likewise, every Interior computer user needs to understand today’s risks and what they need to do to protect our IT assets. Each user and their computer is a potential point of weakness, attack, and threat to themselves, other employees, other parts of the department, other government agencies, and even the private sector. For example, the FBI recently arrested hackers who took over hundreds of thousands of personal computers, including many in federal government agencies, and used them to conduct a variety of illegal activities all unknown to owners of those computers.

We all need to work together as a team. Employees need to understand that IT policies and procedures are implemented to provide the best service at the least cost with adequate security. Likewise, IT staff need to understand that employees do not intentionally seek to make things difficult for IT, they just want it to work so they can use it to do their jobs. We need a good dose of mutual understanding to provide effective IT, at a reasonable cost, with adequate security.

Interior spends nearly $1 billion a year on IT. It is critical that we focus our spending on priority work and get the maximum bang for our buck. To accomplish that, my office is working with senior leadership to establish a clear set of priorities and action plans based on those priorities. We will be focusing on improving security, cutting costs, improving services, and managing our ever-changing technology to meet our employees and customers needs.

One big challenge in IT is keeping everyone informed about what’s going on. I plan to use a variety of media to get the word out on a regular basis. Communication is a two-way street. I encourage all of you to ask questions, make suggestions, and communicate with your respective IT support staff on a regular basis.

Related Article: http://www.peoplelandandwater.gov/people/oco_05-11-07_kempthorne-names-michael-howell.cfm