Our CIO (Steve Cooper) and his comments on the Obama transition and the necessity of increased cybersecurity and IT Management personnel in federal agencies. 

The forthcoming transition is an uncertain time for many in federal government, including some in the IT space, but the Commerce Department CIO Steve Cooper said Tuesday he thinks the career workforce will likely stay despite changes at the top.

What Cooper — one of several politically appointed CIOs who are all but guaranteed to resign Jan. 20 or sooner — is actually concerned about is the difficulties his department is having recruiting specialized workers, such as cybersecurity talent and project managers. 

After talking to federal CIO colleagues and others in leadership positions in government, Cooper suggested, “We could be given authority to share appropriated dollars where each of us might be able to put some money into the equivalent of this modernization fund that isn’t funded. Meaning, take some money out of our budgets, programming dollars, pool that funding and do things that really could be leveraged by every federal agency.”

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