Trump reclassifies government CIOs, allowing for political appointees

The US Office of Personnel Management has issued guidance telling federal agencies to reclassify their CIO positions, potentially allowing the Trump administration to install political appointees and exert more control over federal IT systems.

A Feb. 4 memo from OPM acting director Charles Ezell tells agencies to stop using a merit-based process to hire CIOs as nonpartisan civil servants and instead broaden the search to potentially include outsiders loyal to Trump.

The new guidance is a response, in part, to difficulties with hiring qualified CIOs, Ezell writes. The number of qualified CIOs in the career federal workforce is “miniscule compared to the deep supply of talent” outside the government career ranks, he says.

But Ezell also expects CIOs to now wade into the political arena. Political issues facing CIOs include cybersecurity, AI, cloud computing, and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), he says. The Trump administration has moved to end DEI programs in the federal government.

“The role of agency CIOs has changed dramatically in recent years,” the Ezell memo says. “No longer the station of impartial and apolitical technocrats, the modern agency CIO role demands policy-making and policy-determining capabilities across a range of controversial political topics.”

Open to unqualified candidates

One longtime government IT expert called the reclassification a terrible idea. Allowing CIOs to be political appointees opens the job to people who don’t understand US laws governing federal IT systems and to those who don’t have IT backgrounds, says John Weiler, CEO and CIO of the IT Acquisition Advisory Council, an organization created by Congress in 2007 to advise the US government on IT spending.

Some past government CIOs have been incompetent, and others have used the job to award contracts to favored IT vendors or as a revolving door between government and high-paying private-sector jobs, Weiler says. However, the solution to those problems is for OPM to find better candidates, not open the job up to partisan loyalists, he adds.

“I am more concerned about reducing the corruption than what party they voted for,” Weiler says.

Instead of reclassifying the CIO position, OPM needs to develop better competency tests during the hiring process, he adds. “What we need is for OPM to do its job,” Weiler adds. “The decisions they make have implications for national security.”

Longtime cybersecurity expert Phillip Wylie echoed some of Weiler’s concerns. If the reclassification opens the CIO position to people who don’t have IT backgrounds, the result would be “very bad,” he says.

In some cases, outsiders could provide valuable new perspectives to federal agencies, he adds. However, “if the appointee doesn’t understand technology, they could make bad decisions and negatively impact security postures,” he says. “Purely political reasoning could be disastrous.”

The Ezell memo orders agencies to stop hiring CIOs as “career reserved” positions, which are required to “ensure impartiality, or public’s confidence of impartiality of government.” Career reserved positions are selected through a merit process and must have their qualifications approved by an OPM review board.

By reclassifying CIOs as “general” positions, agencies can hire them from outside sources and can include limited emergency appointments lasting up to 18 months.

One IT expert applauded OPM’s efforts to open the CIO position to a broader pool of potential candidates. CIOs need to be agile and compete for their positions, says Lawrence Pingree, vice president at Dispersive, a networking security company.

“I do think this will enhance the ability for the government to obtain a diverse set of candidates,” he adds. “In the vast majority of enterprises, these positions are not considered career in length.”

The reclassification won’t affect current government CIOs, but it should expand the pool of candidates available to fill open positions, adds Michael Brown, a vice president analyst with the government team at Gartner. CIOs at some large agencies, such as the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security, are already political appointees, he notes, but it may not be practical to extend the practice to bureaus and sub-agencies. 

The reclassification may have positive effects, he adds. “The change opens the aperture to a wider collection of sources for filling CIO positions,” Brown says. “It may also allow for vacancies to be filled more expeditiously.”