Positions: Charbo is chief information officer at the Homeland Security Department, and Howard is CIO at the Veterans Affairs Department.
Tenure: Charbo and Howard have been in their positions since 2005 and 2006, respectively.
2006 Power Player position: Not listed.
What they have done: Many CIOs are responsible for information technology, but they don’t have control over spending. Charbo and
Robert Howard
Howard are rare among government CIOs because they have full spending authority — Charbo by policy and Howard by law. They can control how their organizations spend their IT dollars.
Challenges ahead: Charbo and Howard oversee troubled agencies, and nobody believes their issues will be easy to tackle. The responsibility to fix problems accompanies empowerment.
