This is part of a recurring series, where former federal leaders reflect upon the lessons learned since leaving government.
This iteration takes on a bit of a different format, given we spoke to Richard Spires, who spent 20 years in private sector before joining federal government as the CIO with the Internal Revenue Services and then Department of Homeland Security. He is now CEO at Learning Tree International, and reflects for us upon his lessons learned about government after his time in industry.
If you knew then what you know now….
How would you have prepared for your role as a federal CIO?
The thing that surprised me most was how timid a lot of the government people are in dealing with industry. That may sound strategy, but the fact of the matter is that most government employees, because they've been told to be careful with industry, tend to not want to share the way that they should. I think that hurts government in the long term, because it doesn't enable industry to respond well with solutions.
How would you have worked more effectively within the confines of the Federal Acquisition Regulation?
The far has grown into this beast. I believe it is a challenge because it's just complex. Why can't we have a 10-page FAR? Why can't we strip it down to the essence? We want fair competition, but there are many ways to be fair. There's the cultural aspect, where individual agencies take it well beyond [the regulation] – and put additional restrictions. The way to do this is redo the FAR, make it very lean; that in and of itself will help address a lot of these cultural issues.
How would you have sought out innovative ideas and solutions to help your agency function better?
This dates back to when I was at IRS – when I first came to government, and said 'how can I help.' I felt I should lead by example. I can't meet with every contractor. It's not possible. But I did try to reach out, get on the circuit, and try to tell the DHS or IRS story about where we were trying to go with innovation, what we're trying to accomplish, what the landscape will be like working as a contractor in the organization, what major procurements we're tracking. Not a lot of detail, but from the vision of what we're trying to achieve.
When I was in government I learned a lot. I learned a lot about myself, how to deal with people. It was a great experience. One of the major things I learned, is if you want to get things to government, you need to be able to collaborate across all the stakeholders. Get to know them, find out who they are, understand them, then bring them together in collaborative ways and you can help get things done. Private sector can be more aggressive, but it's still important.
Jill Aitoro is editor of Defense News. She is also executive editor of Sightline Media's Business-to-Government group, including Defense News, C4ISRNET, Federal Times and Fifth Domain. She brings over 15 years’ experience in editing and reporting on defense and federal programs, policy, procurement, and technology.
