Evaluating Clinger-Cohen Act Compliance in Federal Agency Chief Information Officer Positions

Abstract

This dissertation develops a method for evaluating whether federal agencies have complied with the intent of the Clinger-Cohen Act (CCA) of 1996 as they established Chief Information Officer (CIO) positions.

The research is important because the CIO position, as envisioned by the CCA, oversees a growing information technology infrastructure that is increasingly becoming the primary vehicle for inter/intra-government communication and for delivering services to the public. Yet despite this importance, CIO-related aspects of the CCA have not received in-depth evaluation in policy science or public administration literature.

The CCA specified many roles for the CIO position but provided few criteria for evaluating how agencies complied with the provisions that required the establishment of a CIO position. Therefore, a seven-step policy analysis process was used to develop a federal agency CIO position evaluation method that would fill this gap. This analytic research included describing the CCA's legislative context, modeling the federal CIO position, determining the intent of the CCA relative to CIO establishment, and devising a method to evaluate this activity. This research approach was grounded in organizational theory related to institutional structure.

A validated "Federal CIO Position Evaluation Method" (FCPEM) is the result of the research. FCPEM, which contains thirteen evaluation criteria, was tested and validated through key actor interviews at four federal agencies and focused on CIO position establishment activity between 1996 and 2000. Additional research is required to replicate this finding in other agencies and to further validate the use of FCPEM in conducting this type of public policy inquiry.