City IT Director Resigns
The City of Fort Wayne's Chief Information Officer has resigned. Clifford Clarke, the CIO under Mayors Graham Richard and Tom Henry, left his position effective the day after the new IT contract was reviewed by the Fort Wayne City Council.
The contract is still subject to the approval of the Allen County Commissioners.
Perhaps this might open the door for County IT Administrator Ed Steenman to become head of a joint City County IT department.
Mr. Clarke was a former employee of Lincoln National Corporation.
I've always been impressed with the knowledgable and professional manner in which Mr. Clark presented information in the past. But his presentation at last week's Council meeting was nothing short of pathetic.
Does he seriously not understand the difference between "employee" and "position" or between "should retain" and "must retain", or did he just not want to explain himself? I believe at one point he even said he could still get the missing information to the Council members that night if they wanted. Odd thing to say, since the night was almost over by the time he said this.
Posted by: Phil Marx | August 27, 2008 at 09:11 PM
So where is he off to?
Posted by: Kristina Frazier-Henry | August 27, 2008 at 11:38 PM
Clifford Clark is very talented. This is a loss of technical, management, and commmunication-smart talent. Clark won awards for the City of Fort Wayne in the past couple years, and his work with John McCauley on the City-County public access website is truly state of the art.
I hope that there is a joint administrator now hired for fiscal reasons and because the joint city-county portal for public information is just the beginning of future opportunities with today and tomorrow's communications technology and its applications for city and county services for state of the art use and saving tax money in doing so.
Posted by: dan jehl | August 29, 2008 at 07:37 AM
AN E-MAIL THREAD BETWEEN TWO FORMER LINCOLN EMPLOYEES:
"This is also a topic of discussion on Fort Wayne Observed.
"On Fri, Aug 29, 2008 at 3:41 PM, Anonymous wrote:
"Wondering if you two remember Clifford Clarke from our Lincoln days. In bold move a couple of years ago the City of Fort Wayne hired him as the CTO for the city. Well if you rememeber the Clifford that I do he didn't know anything, could never answer a question with a straight answer, and like to try and talk circles around any and every issue. Well... He got caught and he is now paying. Take a look at this clip from last Tuesday's, Aug 19th, City Council meeting.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vr3bl_VkM04
Because of this and many many other problems he has caused the city he is no longer employed by the city government, well he is on "unpaid leave" officially. He was escorted out of the building one week later.
Some people are promoted way beyond their abilities.
Anonymous
Posted by: Jason Blosser | August 29, 2008 at 04:11 PM
Clifford and I have been friends for a long time (preceding his time in city government) and although we disagreed strongly on the IT contract, I have a lot of respect for him. Being the City CIO is a challenging job as I commented on FWP and won't repeat here. Clifford is a talented guy and I wish him the absolute best.
Posted by: Karen Goldner | August 30, 2008 at 01:55 PM
I worked with Cliff at Lincoln Life for a while. He's a personable, likeable and articulate guy.
Posted by: Robert E Pence | September 01, 2008 at 05:30 PM