IGHS49 - Interview with John Montel, CIO at the Department of Interior

Jim Merrifield (00:01.154)
Well, hello and welcome to the InfoGov hot seat. I'm your host Jim Merrifield and with me today is John Montel Welcome, John.

John Montel (00:08.701)
Hello, good afternoon.

Jim Merrifield (00:10.806)
Yeah, it's great to have you, John, on the hot seat. Get to know you little better, and especially with InfoCon on the horizon. I know we're going to talk about your upcoming keynote, but let's get to know you first. Can you tell us a brief introduction of yourself, your current role, and one fun fact about yourself?

John Montel (00:28.917)
well, let's see. John Montel I'm one of the associate chief information officers within the Department of the Interior and I serve for the Bureau of Trust Funds Administration. That's one of the bureaus in Indian Affairs. The Department of Interior is obviously very big. A lot of agencies in there. USGS, National Park Service and others. I also represent the CIO Darren Ash. So he's the overall CIO for the entire Department of the Interior.

Fun fact, I'm an avid chess player, so folks have sometimes seen me in online tournaments, nothing major, more child's play tournaments, but I do play a lot of chess online, and mostly two o'clock in the morning, so.

Jim Merrifield (01:10.882)
Nice, so you're like the moneymaker of chess.

John Montel (01:15.487)
I'm trying to learn, trying to learn. not at the master level, but I'm about 1,100 level player, so. Yeah.

Jim Merrifield (01:25.4)
Awesome, good for you. Good for you. You gotta have a hobby, right? To kind of detach from the day job. For sure. Okay, cool. So let's switch gears to Infocon 2024. I know it's just a couple of weeks away. What are you most excited about, especially in relation to your keynote? Could you give us a sneak peek?

John Montel (01:29.129)
Gotta have a hobby. Absolutely.

John Montel (01:47.955)
Yeah, I think, you know, for me, a lot of what my organization has been covering and has been going through in the last several years to address electronic records management and really sharing our approach and program. I think the federal government and probably industry as well is struggling in this area. I'm not saying we don't have all the answers, but we've taken some pretty deep steps into

setting up a program that not only addresses the paper side, the historical side, but also the future and electronic records and how the federal space is tackling that, and specifically what are the opportunities today and what are the opportunities tomorrow. And I think we've got a good story to tell. I think it'll resonate well with a lot of agencies.

Jim Merrifield (02:33.794)
Yeah, for sure. mean, who doesn't like a case study?

Yeah, and know I think about, don't quote me, but I think about 30 % or at least 25 % of our membership are in the government sector. So it's definitely going to hit home with those individuals. And I think all of us, no matter what sector, we want to know what people like you are doing.

John Montel (02:58.784)
Absolutely. Yeah, and think it spans private industry when it comes to litigation and FOIA and other areas. The information technology paradigm is really starting to encompass things like electronic records management and information governance in general.

Jim Merrifield (03:15.788)
Yeah, no, for sure. I'm looking forward to it. I can't wait to hear the keynote. I know it's on, it's day two, right, the opening keynote, day two. For sure. you'll, you won't be able to, I don't know if you're getting in on Monday night or not, but I know we have the VRC party. So you can't party too hard before that Tuesday morning session.

John Montel (03:23.955)
Yep. Yep.

John Montel (03:39.059)
Yeah, plan to be there early actually Sunday. So get to meet some folks and and you know, get out there and see people and talk to some some industry leaders. I think there's a lot of good opportunity there to get early and especially meet with ARMA and some of the executive representatives. A lot of good info.

Jim Merrifield (03:57.208)
Yeah, look forward for sure. Yeah, look forward to meeting you in person. I'm glad I get to get to know you a little better, at least virtually before the conference. So John, if you were to convince me in 30 seconds why I should register to hear your session in person at Infocon 2024, what would you say to me?

John Montel (04:19.488)
Good question. think Infocon is a great place where you get to unite industry in best practices and you get to tackle a lot of the prevailing challenges in IT. Given that IT is probably one of the most regulated industries, I would say globally, especially in the federal government, the event really serves as a good point to seek support and information across the entire IT spectrum.

In my keynote, what I really want to address is the federal challenges in managing electronic federal records. And the government itself will produce some around 100 to 150 billion emails annually moving forward and about 20 billion of those with electronic attachments. And in addition to that, we're generating on average 4 billion electronic files every single year. And that volume is expected to grow about 25 % by 2030.

looking at records management and the history of that and where that's leading, I think will play a large factor in how the government addresses this particular challenge, especially when you're dealing with video chat and SMS and other emerging technologies that are out there. AI, obviously one of those biggest ones that are in the marketplace. And if we can understand some of those challenges, I think it'll help to address some of the impacts both physically and operationally and maybe set the stage for some of those.

some of those accomplishments we can tackle tomorrow.

Jim Merrifield (05:49.686)
Yeah, we're certainly all drowning in email these days.

John Montel (05:53.087)
Yeah, yeah, I think on average where we're, you know, each individual is probably dealing with two, 300 emails a day in business. And, you know, even if it's responding back and forth, I think you see that in a lot of cases. And then on top of that, you've got chat on your phone and phone calls and teams calls and video calls. And so there's a plethora of information moving much faster than we were historically able to deal with it manually.

Jim Merrifield (06:18.296)
Now we probably got, each of us probably got about 10 emails since we started this conversation.

John Montel (06:22.875)
At least, at least, yeah, yeah.

Jim Merrifield (06:25.624)
For sure, yeah, we'll have to see. Can AI solve the email problem? I don't know. There's some innovative technology out there. think email and email retention, I think we've been talking about that for like 20, 25 plus years. Who knows if we'll be talking about that in 20 plus more years.

John Montel (06:45.583)
Yeah, and will it be email? Will it be something else? Well, email eventually just end up being an artificial intelligence engine you talk to. Yeah, I think it's key.

Jim Merrifield (06:56.12)
Yeah, yeah, we'll have to wait and see. So now appreciate that, John. So anything else that comes to mind that you wanted to share with our audience, certainly convinced me to be at Infocon 2024 in person. But anything else you wanted to share?

John Montel (07:10.339)
No, I I think that, you my position is supporting some of these successful environments. You have to have a lot of coffee. So, you know, a couple of espressos during the day, you know, will certainly help when dealing with a lot of the federal IT and especially records management. But I think ARMA and the Infocon is just a great place to meet leadership, meet your peers, work with industry professionals and really get a handle on where not only the federal market space, but where the commercial industry is going.

and how do we get there as a community? I think there's a lot of benefit to that strength in multiple people getting together. So I really look forward to that and encourage folks to take that opportunity to come out and speak with us and speak with others.

Jim Merrifield (07:55.724)
Yeah, I completely agree. Peer-to-peer networking is, there's really no substitute for it. And especially being in person, face-to-face, being able to have candid conversations. There'll be plenty of coffee at the conference, right? Coffee, snacks, plenty of time to network and things like that. So, no, very good. look forward to, again, meeting in person in Houston in just a couple of weeks. That should be, it should be a great time.

John Montel (07:57.62)
Yeah.

John Montel (08:13.598)
Yep.

Jim Merrifield (08:24.33)
And again, John, thanks so much.

John Montel (08:24.649)
right around the corner. You bet. Thank you. Appreciate your time.

Jim Merrifield (08:28.204)
Yeah, thanks so much for joining us on the InfoGov Hot Seat. To our audience, if you'd like to be a guest like John here on the Hot Seat, please submit your information through our website, infogovhotseat.com. And thank you so much and enjoy the rest of your day.

John Montel (08:42.111)
Thank you.