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As the Office of Management of Budget's administrator for e-government and IT, Karen Evans has shepherded cross-agency initiatives and helped make government systems more secure.
A DEFINING MOMENT IN KAREN EVANS' 27-YEARcareer in government technology came in the mid-1990s,when she was assistant director of information servicesat the Justice Department. Working feverishly to completea mandate from then-Attorney General Janet Renoto give every employee at Justice access to the Internetand e-mail, Evans and her team didn't fully address thesecurity risks involved.In August 1996, a hacker broke into the department'sWeb site, posted obscenities and anti-government graffiti,and replaced a photo with an image of Adolf Hitler.The news made headlines nationwide. For Evans, it wasa momentous event that would alter the way she thinksabout systems security.'You only have to have your team on the front page ofthe Washington Post once in order to realize that everythingis a risk-based approach,' said Evans, now administratorof e-government and information technology atthe Office of Management and Budget. 'When youmake decisions about delivering services, you've got tobalance the risk against those services.'Alan Paller, director of research at the SANS Institute,has said that since that incident, Evans has had a morepositive impact on government cybersecurity than almostany other federal official. Paller and Evans teamedto compile a list of lessons learned from the event toshare with other agencies, which also inspired the institute'sannual Top 20 security vulnerabilities list.For Evans, the incident confirmed the notion that it'soften the things that go wrong ' and how you respond' that teach the most valuable lessons.'All IT professionals'have had projects that were nearcareer-ending because the IT people are always looked atfirst when something doesn't work right,' she said. 'But it'swhat you do with those situations and how you respond tothe pressure that's coming from all directions. [In my case],each and every one of those [situations] were learning opportunitiesthat helped me prepare myself for the next job.'Evans has been in her current job since 2003. In effect,she is the government's chief information officer and topIT executive, and she has helped drive a steady transformationin the way federal agencies approach their missions.'The federal government has really changed fromwhen I first came into the job,' she said. 'The focus usedto be agency-specific ' how an agency can deliver servicesto its constituencies. Now we're working as one unitand delivering solutions as a single government entity.'OMB's Trusted Internet Connections initiative, whichrequires agencies to develop plans for reducing the numberof government gateways to about 100, is one example.'Eight years ago, we would have gotten every reasonwhy you can't do that,' Evans said. 'Now everybody isworking [together] and making it successful because itmakes sense not to re-engineer things.'Clay Johnson, deputy director for management atOMB, said Evans has played a critical role in propellingthat change under the President's Management Agenda,which mandates the deployment of cross-agency e-governmentinitiatives and common frameworks.'Karen and the OMB staff have helped federal agenciesincrease agency performance, transparency, citizen servicesand cost savings,' Johnson said. 'She has been an invaluablemember of the president's management team.'Evans came to OMB from the Energy Department,where she was CIO for 19 months. During that time, shewas elected vice chairwoman of the CIO Council, an organizationthat she credits with helping to push much ofthe change that has occurred in government IT in thepast decade.
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