U.S. Rep. Tom Davis was schooled in politics, literally.

One of the most influential lawmakers regarding federal IT policy, the Virginia Republican spent his teen-age years in the mid-'60s as a Senate page, where he was elected to his first political post: senior class president of the U.S. Capitol Page School. "While other kids collected baseball cards," Davis says, "I collected the cards of lobbyists."

ON POLITICS: Davis claims to know the career details of every congressional representative for the past 40 years

Testament to this lifelong obsession with politics--he claims to know career details of every congressional representative for the past 40 years--can be seen in framed black-and-white photos of an adolescent Davis with the legends of a bygone political era: Dwight Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Everett Dirksen, and Barry Goldwater. Davis proudly shows visitors these pictures mounted on the walls of his Capitol Hill office. Not seen, but implied, are the lessons learned by Davis, who turns 54 Jan. 5, in the cloakrooms from the likes of these leaders who helped provide the foundation to a successful congressional career.

Davis fined-tuned his political skills as a 12-year member and then chief executive of the board of supervisors in Fairfax County, Va., a coin's throw across the Potomac from Washington and a locus of tech businesses in northern Virginia. During that time, Davis served as VP and general counsel for PRC Inc., a federal IT integrator now part of Northrop Grumman Corp., where he began to grasp how IT can influence government policy and action.

Few on Capitol Hill possess Davis' amalgamation of political savoir faire and IT savvy because many of his colleagues just don't get technology and its vital role in running government. That combination has helped Davis, first elected to Congress in 1994, quickly ascend to the leadership of House Republicans. He sought and received assignments to key IT-influencing committees, including a seat on the Commerce Committee's Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet. But his crowning achievement was being appointed to chair the Governmental Reform Committee's Subcommittee on IT and Procurement Policy, his perch to review administration action and proposed laws regarding federal IT matters. Among his achievements: sponsoring the Y2K Act (which shielded businesses from potential lawsuits resulting from fixing the dating problem) and shepherding the just-enacted E-Government Act through Congress. One section of that law includes a pet project in which government IT managers can be temporarily loaned to private businesses and vice versa so they can learn from each other's best practices.

Davis also played a vital role in molding key IT ingredients of the Homeland Security Act, including provisions that strengthen information security laws and encourage private-sector innovation to battle terrorists. Other provisions of the law provide antitrust, Freedom of Information Act, and civil-liability exemptions for businesses that share information about threats to the nation's critical infrastructure. "To fight the war on terrorism, we need the best and brightest minds around the table to figure out what we can do," Davis says. "We can't let liabilities laws to discourage those people from getting to the table."

In the coming year, Davis contends, Congress won't take a backseat to the Bush administration in defining IT policy. "We'll move ahead legislatively in January and February; we'll hit the ground running," he says. "The administration can react, but we know where we want to go." Davis' agenda includes initiatives to make procuring IT hardware, software, and services faster and easier. A key element of that plan is to provide procurement officers with the right education and tools to get the best deals for the government, which he estimates could save taxpayers billions. He'd like to expand use of share-in-savings contracts, in which vendors take on more risks in their contracts with the government but reap a greater share of the savings realized by the technologies and services. Davis also wants to explore using offshore workers to do some software coding, provided it doesn't compromise national security. "I see my job as an honest broker trying to get the best value for the country," he says.

Davis' clout on the Hill, especially among fellow Republicans, is on the rise, thanks to November's election, in which Republicans increased their majority in the House, a rarity in a midterm election when the same party holds the White House. Davis, as chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee--the fund-raising arm for House GOP candidates--helped disperse $150 million to Republican candidates, and he sees it's time they return the favor, voting in favor of Davis' proposals.

"His stock is high," says David McClure, VP for E-government at the nonpartisan Council for Excellence In Government and former director of IT management issues for the General Accounting Office.

Davis isn't an ideologue, and McClure and others--including the Bush administration's point man on IT, Mark Forman--credit him with holding hearings that present a wide range of views, not just from federal officials but from local and state governments, business, and labor. "He's a thought leader for us and a key policy maker," says Forman, associate director for IT and E-government at the Office of Management and Budget. Forman lauds Davis for holding hearings that raised the government's awareness on the importance of enterprise architecture as a way, not only of linking federal programs and agencies, but of connecting with local and state governments and the private sector.

"Davis is very pragmatic," McClure says. "He's focused on getting results and getting government to operate better. He's not into huge policy debates that go on endlessly. He's just a roll-up-the-sleeves kind of guy."
--Eric Chabrow