Offering regional and national programs, CIO (and CSO) events bring together some of the most respected names and thought leaders in information technology and security. Presented by CIOs and other senior level executives, these invitation-only programs offer timely topics and strong networking. Learn More »
Public Council Teleconference: Application Rationalization — Hidden Costs and Smart Decisions
November 17 at 11:00 am US/Eastern (GMT-5)
Join Honorio Padrón, of The Hackett Group, who will share the drivers for companies to tackle application rationalization and the results of research that define the hidden cost of complexity. Additionally, we will discuss key decision milestones—to start or not, holding the course steady and fulfilling expectations.
Virtual Desktop Cost-Benefit Analysis — Michael Jacobs, Catlin Group
The analysis contained in this presentation measures the cost of everything from the machines and licenses to the infrastructure for virtual vs. traditional desktop environments.
Honor your best senior team members - Apply for the CIO Ones to Watch Award
Get well-earned public recognition for your top up-and-coming team members, your IT organization and your enterprise. Award winners will be announced, publicized and feted in May 2010, great timing to help attract new IT recruits to your company.
Learn more about the CIO Executive Council »February 15, 2003 — CIO —
On the five-minute morning walk from his Washington, D.C., apartment to the FBI’s J. Edgar Hoover building, Darwin A. John, the bureau’s new CIO, thought about his upcoming interview with this reporter and made himself a promise: "I’m just going to talk specifics." Infrastructure upgrades. A virtual case management system with multimedia capabilities. A data warehousing project with advanced search functions that would help the FBI "know what it knows," and thereby prevent intelligence failures like the ones that led to 9/11.
But despite his best intentions, that’s not what happens. By 9:30 a.m., John, a slightly rumpled, deeply jowled elder of the CIO profession, is talking about how the FBI needs to think "holistically," how law enforcement agencies and the Department of Homeland Security can work together to find "simplicity on the other side of complexity," and how having a philosophical bent could work to his advantage at an agency that worships action, not thought.
"I’m talking about three things at once, which I always do, because that’s the way I think," says John, 64, who’s tall (5 feet 11 inches) without seeming so (he hunches) and speaks authoritatively in a quiet voice. He has clear blue eyes that he veils and unveils by taking off and putting on his eyeglasses throughout the day. "For me," he says, explaining how he thinks about his plans to remake the FBI’s IT, "there’s a canvas, and we’re painting a picture, and we’ll draw a little tree here or rock there. I don’t start at the top and work to the bottom. That drives some people crazy."
What remains to be seen is whether it will drive Washington crazy enough to prevent John from completing his picture. The FBI is not known for valuing introspection, yet on July 8, after an extensive national search, it chose this compulsively thoughtful and unassuming man, and charged him with transforming this almost mythical agency from a Keystone cop shop into an IT-powered hive of supersleuths. As one of FBI Director Robert Mueller’s most prominent appointments after 9/11, John, former CIO of the Mormon Church and Scott Paper, has put his neck on the line in a way few federal government CIOs ever have.
He didn’t do it for the money. The position was advertised at between $125,972 and $138,200 a year for a person who, as the recruiter who led the search puts it, "could be pulling down his $500K." John and his wife of 45 years, both lifelong Mormons, left their home state of Utah last July so that John could move into a bare office in the seventh-floor executive corridor known to FBI insiders as Mahogany Row.