More On IT Shakeup At Social Security
From Information Week Government:
After a shakeup in the Social Security Administration's IT organization, the agency's CIO [Chief Information Officer], Frank Baitman, has abruptly resigned. His departure follows a decision by commissioner Michael Astrue to shift most of the agency CIO's responsibilities to deputy commissioner for systems, Kelly Croft....
Baitman's departure brings to a close a nine-year experiment with the agency's CIO's office that, according to some observers and former officials, never resolved the fractured line of authority between IT spending and operations that separated the CIO and the office of systems.
According to Feig, who left the agency in June, one of the primary reasons for the break-up of Social Security's IT [Information Technology] department was Astrue's perception that Baitman failed to advance the agency's strategic plan. In an interview with InformationWeek, Feig said there was a split on IT vision at the agency, with Baitman's office pushing an aggressive agenda to transform its IT systems while saving money over the long-term, and Croft sticking with the agency's old but proven mainframe systems, most of which still run the decades-old Cobol programming language.
Feig's downfall came after the Office of Management and Budget sought input on the strategic direction of Social Security's IT systems, and Feig, who joined the agency last year from the private sector, responded with a version of the strategy he was brought in to develop. Feig's strategy is described in a document titled, "SSA-2020: Vision and Strategy." However, the commissioner didn't endorse the vision's sweeping nature, and Feig said he was asked to leave for engaging the White House without authority to do so. ...
And Social Security's inspector general is working on an audit of the agency's software environment. The audit will address the agency's plans to evolve away from Cobol, its continued use of Cobol in an era of Web-based apps, its ability to hire and retain staff trained in Cobol, and the work involved in re-engineering the agency's Cobol code in modern programming languages.
Okay, let me get this straight. We've got two former IBM guys (Baitman and Feig), the latter of whom is an IEEE Fellow and holds 27 patents (See http://www.thecloudcomputing.org/2009/2/panels.html) versus Kelly Croft, who started as a service representative with Social Security 30 years ago (See http://www.informationweek.com/news/government/leadership/231002084). I'm sorry. I would have gone with the IBM folks.
ReplyDeleteIt's funny, I have been saying that if a private sector computer expert came in and looked at what kinds of systems and software SSA uses to try to do its work, they would spend the first week laughing their butts off. So it seems to be.
ReplyDelete@ anon 2...are you sure they would stop laughing after a week?
ReplyDeleteKelly Croft is well-respected and has proven himself as a company man -- very loyal to the head honchos. Interesting that Astrue has chopped off the heads of several of Obama's choices. I'm surprised Astrue still has his job. Baitman was the right guy but the timing was off. He would have had more of a blank check, and agency loyalty would not have been an issue, had Baitman entered under an Obama-chosen Commissioner.
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