Broader Budget Authority Could Help CIOs Cut Costs

One way to wring more savings from the federal information technology enterprise in a time of flat or declining budgets is to give agency chief information officers broader power to make financial decisions, Veterans Affairs CIO Roger Baker said Monday.

Baker is the only agency CIO with authority, provided by Congress, to unilaterally cancel IT spending projects or to shift funding from one project to another. This allowed him to cancel about $700 million in IT spending during his first year in office and to return about $400,000 of that money to the Treasury Department.

Baker also is about to launch a policy to disallow personal deskside printers departmentwide, which VA estimates could save up to $100 million over several years...