The CIO/CTO Agenda

We swung by Women in Technology's panel on the 2014 CIO/CTO Agenda Thursday night in McLean, Va. Georgetown University CIO Lisa Davis took the school from no mobile presence to a mobile app with 30,000 users. She says attributes that have served her are strong communication skills and being comfortable speaking and establishing a presence. SAIC deputy CIO Linda Howard says it's important to be able to talk to clients in non-tech terms. She says her department's No. 1 goal is to write every e-mail and technical instruction in non-geek language. Instructions also need to be given in three sentences or fewer. 

Equal Employment Opportunity Commission CIO Kimberly Hancher says her agency was one of the first to adopt a BYOD policy in 2012. She never expected a "small, poor agency" to be the first, but it also helps that it doesn't deal with classified information. She says one of her biggest challenges is bringing on seasoned project managers that know how to supervise a team of people. Google public sector CTO and innovation evangelist Michele WeslanderQuaid says the company supports the social dynamics of how we interface with technology, but the challenge is bringing that to the public sector. She spends lots of time informing that changing mindset. (All we want to know is when Carl Levin will switch to wearing Google Glass on the end of his nose.)