CIOs on the move at DIA, ICE, and RAT Board

The Office of Management and Budget’s Office of E-Government and IT is getting a much-appreciated shot in the arm of people and brain power after the recent exodus of several long-time executives and policy folks.

Grant Schneider, the Defense Intelligence Agency’s chief information officer, will be joining the office on a two-year detail to work on cybersecurity issues.

Schneider told me last week about his new job. And when pressed whether he would be the next federal CIO and this was only a holding position, Schneider said he had no knowledge or plans of another move.

“I’m going to be senior cyber advisor in the E-Gov organization,” he said. “What we’ve discussed so far is I’ll focus on a little bit of the oversight of the continuous diagnostics and mitigation (CDM) program and also, I’m guessing, I’ll spend more of my time focused on identity management across the broader federal government space. It’s about getting stakeholders together, charting a new course on doing identity management and starting to make more progress.”

Programming note: You can listen to my full interview with Schneider next Thursday at 9 a.m. on my Ask the CIO radio show.

Schneider announced earlier this year he would be leaving DIA after 22 years, including the last seven as its CIO.

Janice Glover-Jones, the deputy CIO for DIA, will be the acting CIO until a new one is named.

Schneider’s move to OMB is an interesting one for several reasons. First off, the White House often times likes to bring someone over as a senior advisor before pushing them in to one of the plum roles. Anne Rung, for example, was a senior advisor to Beth Cobert, the deputy director for management at OMB, before being nominated to be administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy.

But even if Schneider is not on the short list to be the next federal CIO, the fact that OMB is bringing in a cyber expert demonstrates a shift in thinking. Throughout the first five years of the Obama administration, OMB handed much of the cyber oversight and policy to the White House cyber coordinator and to the Department of Homeland Security. Yes, they still played a role with things such as cyberstat or the Federal Information Security Management (FISMA) Act, but Vivek Kundra, the first federal CIO, and Steve VanRoekel, who departed as federal CIO in September, had little real appetite for cybersecurity policy.

Finally, Schneider’s move to OMB also will help create a bond between the White House and the Defense Department among the technology community that has been missing over the last five years. I’ve been told several times over the years DoD’s participation with civilian agency CIOs has been lacking ever since Dave Wennergren left the CIO community.

Along with Schneider’s move, several other well-known IT community members are changing jobs.

Shawn Kingsberry, the CIO at the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, is leaving government Oct. 18 for the private sector.

Kingsberry confirmed his move in an email. He said he will be joining TASC as its director of cloud services.

“This is an awesome opportunity to help the federal government expand the use of 21st century technology and business approaches,” he said in an email. “My focus will be on all things cloud, which include big data analytics and security.”

Kingsberry has been the RAT Board’s CIO since 2009 and has spent 22 years in government.

The RAT Board jumped into the cloud immediately as it set up its network and data analytics. Kingsberry pushed the ball forward using the cloud to better analyze data.

A third CIO on the move is Kevin Kern. He’s left the Immigration and Customs Enforcement directorate at DHS after only four months on the job.

ICE brought in Kern under special hiring authorities in May to serve as the acting CIO after Thomas Michelli moved to become the deputy CIO at the Coast Guard in February.

Industry experts expected Kern to be the next permanent CIO, but obviously that either didn’t happen or he got tired of waiting. ICE issued a job announcement for a CIO that closed in June.

Two other personnel tidbits — Dick Gregg, the recently retired assistant secretary of the fiscal service at the Treasury Department, didn’t stay on the golf course for too long. He joined H.J. Steininger as a managing director. Gregg will focus on federal financial management, including shared services and the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act (DATA Act).

Martha Przysucha has taken a detail to NASA to be its digital services director. She comes to NASA from the General Services Administration, where she spent the last three years as the director of policy, management and outreach in the Office of Governmentwide Policy.

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