Dan DeFrancesco: Don’t Be Afraid of Your Own Shadow

I always keep an open mind before I interview someone for a profile. However, I have to admit, I was a bit cautious as I walked into the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) headquarters in Washington, DC, to interview Pamela Dyson, the agency’s CIO, for this month’s Waters Profile. 

Dyson has spent nearly her entire career working for the federal government, spending 23 years with the US International Trade Commission before joining the SEC in 2010. Whether it’s fair or not, the public sector isn’t always viewed as the most innovative area when it comes to technology. As Dyson explained in the interview, small IT teams, limited funding and rules around acquiring the necessary vendors has limited the type of work many agencies can do.

Still, even with the immense number of hurdles that face a leader of technology at an agency like the SEC, I was pleasantly surprised at how unperturbed she seemed by it all. Dyson is a motivated individual who doesn’t mind putting herself in the thick of it and getting her hands dirty. 

Countless times I heard, not only from Dyson but her peers too, including the SEC’s deputy COO Jayne Seidman, that the agency’s technology department was not in the business of saying no to its clients. It’s refreshing to see that type of attitude from someone who could just as easily pack it in and get ready to collect her pension. Clearly, that’s not Dyson’s style.

It isn’t just the work Dyson is trying to do around leveraging big data at the SEC that was so impressive. It’s how she actually goes about doing it. One of the first things Dyson learned during her initial discussions with colleagues when she arrived at the SEC was the presence of shadow IT teams within some of the larger divisions at the agency. Fed up with constantly being told no and the lack of support for their road maps and vision, some parts of the organization went out and simply built their own technology teams, according to Dyson.

One of the first things Dyson learned when she arrived at the SEC was the presence of shadow IT teams.

That revelation could easily have led to the dismantling of shadow IT programs. Dyson could have put her foot down, and, along with then-SEC CIO Thomas Bayer, eliminated the teams to get to a more centralized IT structure. However, instead of viewing the individual groups as competition, Dyson embraced them. 

“I don’t see that as a problem, because I don’t know everybody’s business as well as they know their business. So, the shadow IT organizations come in, they are embedded in those groups. They know the work of those groups. They know the tools of those groups. And we partner with them to make sure that they get the resources that they need,” Dyson said. “To have those tentacles in the organization...that’s a valuable proposition. So, I don’t feel threatened by shadow IT. Every day I look to figure out how we can partner with them to set better expectations.” 

Not Threatened

Dyson admitted that it took a bit of time to get used to, but she was never intimidated by their existence. While she’s a strong believer in centralizing and prioritizing the IT budget, Dyson says she has no problem dividing up the different divisions. At the end of the day, she says she’d rather talk to someone in each division who understands IT and can help align their roadmap with the overall picture, than a business person who doesn’t have a technology background. 

Again, it’d be easy for Dyson to “clean the house” and put her stamp of approval on everything, but she sees the bigger picture.

“My overall objective is for the SEC to be successful, not for IT to be successful,” she explained. “I am here to facilitate, support, coordinate and work with all the teams to make sure that things get done. It’s all about the SEC, not about IT.”