Every other word in federal IT these days seems to be “modernization.” As agencies modernize, though, remember that the technology base they build on itself resulted from a modernization drive. That earlier drive came as agencies moved from PCs on local area networks to the electronic government age. E-gov, as we shorthanded it, put government online. And it made cybersecurity a more potent issue than ever.

This all came to mind over the weekend after I learned of the death of Jim Flyzik. He passed last week at his home in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. According to his published obituary, Jim was at home and surrounded by family.

In 27 years of federal service, Flyzik worked throughout the civilian side of government during a crucial period of change. He retired from government in late 2002 at 49, while serving as a senior advisor in the final days of the Office of Homeland Security — precursor to the department itself (Homeland Security would start operations as a department on March 1, 2003.)

So whatever coherence the rapidly cobbled, post-9/11 department had, Flyzik deserves a portion of the credit for this huge task.

Flyzik was not just an effective government executive, he was an accessible, available, talkative and downright pleasant presence on the scene. He mentored untold members of up-and-coming federal career employees. And he received bundles of awards over the years, including a Hall of Fame designation from my former publication, Government Computer News. I once prodded Jim on why he — tall, always impeccably dressed and topped with a thick silver mane — managed to avoid thinning hair, when the top of my own head was getting ever more shiny.

Flyzik had also served as vice chair of the Chief Information Officers Council until his retirement. The Clinger-Cohen Act had established CIOs only in 1996. Flyzik helped define what the CIO position should look like and what it should do. And he’d walked the walk, having been CIO of the Treasury Department since 1997, before the George W. Bush administration detailed him to the nascent DHS. He held that job for five years. Nowadays, CIOs are lucky to last a year.

Former Senate Governmental Affairs Committee and, later, Bush administration management staff member Mark Forman recalled how Flyzik influenced a skeptical Congress to back the deployment of electronic benefits cards to those receiving federal assistance.

Forman said Senators were wary of the very idea, having witnessed a spectacularly failed “smart card” program at another agency. Witness after witness failed to convince the committee until Flyzik outlined a detailed business case. The cards would lower costs by an order of magnitude and increase security on the same scale.

“No one could explain it until Flyzik,” Forman recalled. The cards would prove to be a “game shifter for controlling fraud,” he said.

After helping DHS’s initial CIO, Steve Cooper, set up the IT arrangements for the new department, Flyzik went on to a consulting and advising career. Among many duties, he chaired the Homeland Security Task Group of the Information Technology Association of America. Flyzik’s career also included a long stint teaching graduate level cybersecurity at the University of Maryland Global Campus.

To those toiling for modernization and dealing with the vicissitudes of public service and big projects, take a minute to recall one of the community’s trail blazers and what it means to make tangible contributions.

Jim, we’ll miss ya.

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