CIA official: Stop treating IT as a service

Federal Times: One of the legacies of early information technology adoption in the corporate world and public sector, alike, is the tendency to view IT shops as part of the administrative cadre — placing it more in line with human resources and billing-and-receiving than an operational department. The reality, according to Sean Roche, associate deputy director for digital innovation at the CIA, is CIO and IT shops need to be part of the mission.

“Stop treating IT like a service; stop treating IT with the word ‘customer’ in it; stop having IT people feel like they are somehow in the admin portion of our organizations,” Roche told attendees at the 2016 DoD Intelligence Information Systems (DoDIIS) conference in Atlanta, Georgia. “IT is the mission.”

Read article