On average, a federal CIO remains in office for just twenty-three months, compared to nearly five years in the private sector.
Nailing the Crucial Interview with Your Federal CIO Candidates
Download Resources
PDF Accessibility
One or more of the PDF files on this page fall under E202.2 Legacy Exceptions and may not be completely accessible. You may request an accessible version of a PDF using the form on the Contact Us page.
On average, a federal CIO remains in office for just twenty-three months, compared to nearly five years in the private sector. Even more noteworthy is that it takes about a year to "permanently" replace an agency's CIO. This means that a third or more of those legislatively mandated roles are performed at any point in time by people temporarily acting in the job.
Recruitment of the federal CIO continually remains a difficult issue across government, with no quick fix solution in sight. Many factors contribute to these recruitment and retention challenges. They range from basic perception issues—the CIO is too often viewed not as strategic business partner but as a technologist—to inadequate authority given to the CIO to enforce policies or standards. Still, a replacement must be recruited by federal agencies each time a CIO post is vacated, if only to comply with the law.