No Obama CTO yet, but there is an Obama chief performance officer

Despite the NYT reports that the Obama CTO would be named Wednesday, it was not to be. We’ll have to wait a bit longer for that one. Instead, there was word of the Obama chief performance officer. Today, he nominated Nancy Killefer to be the Office of Management and Budget’s deputy director for management, a post currently held by Clay Johnson. She will also be the Obama administration’s chief performance officer.

During the Clinton administration, Killefer worked at the Treasury Department, where she served as assistant secretary for management, chief financial officer and chief operating officer. Currently, she is with McKinsey and Co., a management consulting firm, where she leads their public sector division.

Today on Federal News Radio 1500 AM’s Daily Debrief with Chris Dorobek and Amy Morris, we were all over this story, largely because I think it will have a big impact on feds. Each successive administration has, in the end, built on the efforts of previous administrations. During the Clinton administration, there was the National Performance Review, led by then Vice President Al Gore. We all remember the infamous $400 hammer that became the symbol of government waste, fraud and abuse. (See the archived NRP progress reports here.)Under the Bush administration — the first MBA president — there has been the President’s Management Agenda with its very public and very transparent scorecards measuring agency performance — green, yellow, or red. Killefer will likely be the guiding light for Team Obama’s management agenda.

Federal News Radio’s Max Cacas was at the Obama announcement this morning and filed a report. Hear that story here. But we had a number of people on talking about Killefer and the role of the chief performance officer. Jim Flyzik, president of The Flyzik Group and the former Treasury CIO, worked for Killefer at Treasury, and he praised the appointment. [Hear our conversation with Flyzik here.] We also spoke with Robert Shea, who, until recently, served as the Bush administration’s performance czar. He is now with GrantThorton. He also praised Killefer’s appointment. [ Hear our conversation with Shea here.]

You can read Obama’s remarks for yourself… and even see the video.

And we still await the Obama CTO.