10 Lessons From Leading Government CIOs

Under extreme budget pressure, federal IT leaders adopt shared services and build mobile app stores as they shift dollars where most needed.

More than a dozen of the federal government's top IT decision makers talked about the opportunities they see, and they challenges they face, at InformationWeek's Government IT Leadership Forum May 3 in Washington, D.C.

The speakers included federal CIO Steven VanRoekel, federal CTO Todd Park, and Department of Defense CIO Teri Takai. An overarching theme at the Forum was how agencies must "do more with less" on a flat IT budget that stands at $79 billion. Here are 10 lessons I took away from the event.

1. Shared services are the new trend in federal IT. With budgets flat, government CIOs are developing shared services (using one email system per agency instead of 18, for example). The redundancy of overlapping systems has been apparent for years, but service-based architectures and the need to free up funds for new projects are driving this trend. The major champion is federal CIO VanRoekel, who released the Federal IT Shared Services Strategy the day before the Forum...