On average, a federal CIO remains in office for just twenty-three months,
compared to nearly five years in the private sector. Even more noteworthy
is that it takes about a year to "permanently" replace an agency's CIO.
This means that a third or more of those legislatively mandated roles
are performed at any point in time by people temporarily acting in the
job.
Recruitment of the federal CIO continually remains a difficult issue
across government, with
no quick fix solution in sight. Many factors contribute to these recruitment
and retention
challenges. They range from basic perception issues—the CIO is
too often viewed not as
strategic business partner but as a technologist—to inadequate
authority given to the CIO to
enforce policies or standards. Still, a replacement must be recruited
by federal agencies each
time a CIO post is vacated, if only to comply with the law.
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