Bill Marion Named Air Force Deputy CIO

There are changes in the works in the CIO office at the Air Force.  This week it was announced that Bill Marion has been named as the new deputy CIO for the Air Force.  Marion, an ardent advocate for change and innovation has served in several different IT leadership positions including CTO of the Air Force’s Space Command and, most recently, CIO of the Air Force’s personnel directorate.  Want to find out more about deputy CIO, Marion.  You can read the full story on FedScoop here and follow him on Twitter here.

Tony Scott Speaks Out Against Year End Spending Frenzy

Federal CIO, Tony Scott, has definite opinions about many government IT issues and he added how budgets are divided up to the list.  This past week he spoke out against a time honored tradition, the end of year spending frenzy citing that it produces “exactly the wrong behavior…short term, even frivolous, spending and less of a focus on longer-term investments.”   With ‘hurry-up spending’ drawing the ire of Congress since the 1980s and with data from Harvard researchers to support his findings, Scott just has to figure out a new budgeting model that’s in tune with better IT practices.

Roat and Dunkin Urge More Vigilance to Ensure Security of National Critical Infrastructure

In speeches last week at the Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology, CIOs Maria Roat, Department of Transportation, and Ann Dunkin, Environmental Protection Agency, urged greater vigilance in protection America’s national critical infrastructure.  With more and more data being collected and stored by government agencies the CIOs challenged the audience to consider a data plan to protect the privacy of citizens and also to protect critical infrastructure from cyber attacks.  “Pipelines are a perfect example,” Roat said. “While we’re all about open data, sharing data, making it available, there’s things on pipelines [in the data], and we need to protect those systems and those types of information. There needs to be a balance between what’s open, what’s shared, and what we actually have to keep in house.”  How do you determine what data is open in your agency?  Let us know on Twitter!