The Small Business Administration

Christine Liu is in an enviable position. The Small Business Administration’s chief information officer controls the agency’s technology budget and is primarily focused on helping the program offices meet their missions.

Liu, who has been at SBA for more than three years, didn’t come to SBA with this set up in place. In fact, the first year or so, Liu had to take the initiative to attend meetings and be part of the up front decision making process.

But now her colleagues see the benefits she brings and the SBA CIO works with the chief financial officer to lead a governance board that oversees projects and programs across the agency.

Liu says one of SBA’s highest priorities is upgrading its loan modernization program. She also is working on a Green IT strategy and a data strategy.

Bio: Christine Liu became the new CIO at the Small Business Administration Agency on April 24, 2006. She is responsible for planning, developing, communicating and coordinating SBA’s IT activities nationwide to ensure high-quality information is delivered expediently to all who need it, when and where they need it. A member of the Senior Executive Service since 2000, she has 27 years of federal service and is the recipient of the 2005 Presidential Meritorious Rank Award.

Prior to becoming CIO at SBA, she served as Acting Deputy CIO and Chief Knowledge Officer (CKO) at the State Department since March 2005. In this position, she was involved in major initiatives in support of the Secretary’s vision toward Transformational Diplomacy. She directed the development of the Joint State/USAID IT Strategic Plan, Enterprise Architecture activities, and management of the Department’s IT investment portfolio.

As CKO, she provided strategic direction, advocacy, guidance and support on knowledge management initiatives within State, and between State and other foreign affairs partners and other USG agencies. Her office served as the Department’s e-Gov coordinator for implementing the President’s e-Gov Management Agenda (PMA) and as the Department’s principal interlocutor with OMB on all e-Gov related issues.

From 1999 to March 2005, she was Director of the Systems Integration Office, Bureau of Information Resource Management at the State Department. In this role, she provided policy direction, budget formulation, strategic and tactical planning, and implementation guidance on major modernization initiatives: State’s mainframe data centers and “server farm” operation centers; network infrastructure; enhanced backup contingency planning and implementation; corporate applications software design and implementation for worldwide use; application systems integration; corporate data base systems administration; data standardization and integration. She pioneered the establishment of consolidated “server farms” in 2000, referred to as “Enterprise Server Operations Centers”.

From 1987 to 1998, she held various IT project management positions at the State Department in the areas of telecommunications and mainframe systems. From 1989 to 1992, she led the task force that was responsible for planning, designing and standing up a major Data Center to serve as a the contingency backup and co-processing center for State’s primary center. She started her federal career as a computer programmer with the Department of Energy in 1979, and worked at the Department of Agriculture for 6 years as a systems analyst and project leader.

Christine received her B.S. Degree in Chemistry from American University in 1974, and her M.S. Degree in Computer Systems from the University of Maryland in 1998. She completed the Advanced Management Program on Information Resources Management from National Defense University in 1994. She became a member of the GITEC Board and Executive Advisory Committee in 2006, and she is the Program Committee Chair for the Executive Women in Government (EWG) organization since 2005. She is a mentor at heart, and was an active executive participant with State’s Civil Service Mentoring Program. Her hobbies include gardening landscaping and classical piano playing.

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