Editor's note: Karen Evans, administrator of e-government and information technology at the Office of Management and Budget, serves as the de facto federal chief information officer. Last month, Federal Computer Week Executive Editor Christopher J. Dorobek and reporter Matthew Weigelt spoke with Evans about her views on the role of the CIO 10 years after the Clinger-Cohen Act became law.

Give us your assessment of where CIOs stand now. What's their role in government? What influence do they have?

I would say that the position itself and the goal of what was intended with Clinger-Cohen is still the main premise of the CIO position, which is better management of the information technology investments.

The investments in technology have become more complicated, but the goal of the legislation is still valid. So that is still [what] CIOs are doing: making sure that IT investments and projects, as they go forward, are achieving the outcome. When you go back and read Clinger-Cohen, it's performance-based. The intent of it is performance-based and results-oriented. That is what CIOs are doing. I would say the landscape has changed because technology has evolved so quickly and rapidly. Ten years is a lifetime in technology.

How has that changed the CIO's role? Have they had to change the way they think? What has that changing landscape meant for the people who are CIOs today as opposed to the people who were CIOs 10 years ago?

Initially when the policy came out from OMB to implement that -- and if you go back and look at this and you talk to other folks -- at that point, they used to call it advanced data technologies, remember?

So it used to be the person who was managing ADT then became the CIO, the person who was in charge of operational aspects of IT. So what you are seeing is the evolution of moving from just an operations environment to a strategic adviser to the head of the agency or a component organization, depending on how the department went forward in implementing Clinger- Cohen.