Scott Flanders, who will assume the permanent CIO position Sunday, is charged with managing and employing technology to enhance “information access and strengthen agency performance,” the NRC’s release states. Additionally, Flanders’s office is also charged with overseeing cyber and information security, data management, artificial intelligence and more.

Flanders “has risen through the ranks at the NRC over many years and has been an outstanding member of the senior executive service since 2004,” Raymond Furstenau, NRC’s acting executive director for operations, said in the release. “His experience with the government’s use of information technology and his deep understanding of the NRC mission will help the agency navigate the challenges of the future.”

As deputy CIO, Flanders “planned, directed and oversaw resources” to ensure IT and information management systems’ delivery to support the agency’s goals and priorities, the NRC said. 

Flanders joined the NRC in 1991 as a reactor engineer intern, and later served in the agency’s Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards’ Division of Site Safety and Environmental Analysis and in the Office of New Reactors as the director, according to CIO.gov. Additionally, he served as the deputy director of the Division of Waste Management and Environment Review in the ONMSS.

Flanders takes over as NRC’s permanent IT chief  amid an internal push on artificial intelligence. A staff letter sent earlier this month recommended the agency follow an AI framework that outlines AI governance, hiring new talent, upskilling existing workers, maturing the commission’s data management program and allocating resources to support AI integration into IT infrastructure.

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Mendes will take on a new role as CIO for Tarrant County, Texas, starting in January, according to the post. His move comes after roughly four years as Commerce’s CIO and previous leadership roles at the International Trade Administration and the U.S. Agency for Global Media.

“Well friends. I am retiring from the Fed!” Mendes wrote in his post. “Over 14+ years, far exceeding expectations and bets when I joined, I have had a ball.”

Before taking on the top information technology role for Commerce in August 2019, Mendes was CIO for the agency’s International Trade Administration for nearly two years. There, Mendes said, he became “the first Portuguese to head a US Agency, [and the] highest ever ranked career Latino at Commerce.” He attributed the agency’s success to the “extraordinary cadre of individuals” with whom he worked.

Mendes also spent more than eight years in various leadership roles at the U.S. Agency for Global Media, formerly the U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), before joining Commerce. Those roles included CIO, chief technology officer, chief operations officer, and acting chief executive officer and chief financial officer, according to his LinkedIn.

“At the BBG, we transformed a once great organization that had become ossified. By the time we left, the BBG had the widest distribution portfolio of any western media, Shortwave to Twitter. Audience rose from 165M to 278M in 6 years. We were 90% cloud based by 2014,” Mendes wrote. 

Mendes’s last day is Dec. 31, according to his post. His new role in Tarrant County — where he said he’s commuted from weekly for the past two-and-a-half years — begins Jan. 2.

The Department of Commerce didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Mendes has won several FedScoop 50 awards and was a recipient of the Golden Gov: Federal Executive of the Year award in 2023.

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Uppal is currently leading CMS’s Office of Information Technology and serves as its acting CIO, the agency said in a Wednesday release. He will join the IRS in early 2024, replacing Nancy Sieger, who left in March.

“This is a historic time for the IRS as our transformation efforts continue accelerating, and Rajiv brings a strong background to help our agency continue to modernize and work to provide better technology to support taxpayer service and tax enforcement,” IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel said in a statement in a release from the agency Wednesday.

Uppal has more than 25 years of IT experience in both the public and private sectors. According to the release, Uppal’s experience at CMS includes areas that are a priority for the IRS, like security, privacy, enterprise architecture, and IT investment planning. 

Before joining CMS, Uppal was part of the U.S. Digital Service team at the Department of Homeland Security. There, he worked on “transformation initiatives such as the Trusted Traveler and Single Window projects,” according to his CMS biography page.

Uppal worked in the private sector earlier in his career, including co-founding the company NeuVis, which was acquired by IBM, serving as president and chief technology officer of retail technology company Retail Optimization, and working as senior director of product development for software development company Revionics.

Since Sieger left the IRS as its CIO earlier this year to be chief technology officer for the Treasury Department, there have been several personnel who’ve shifted in and out of that role. Treasury Deputy CIO Jeff King took on a detail as IRS CIO for 90 days before returning back to the larger department in June. Since then, Kaschit Pandya has assumed the role of interim CIO.

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Melinda Rogers, who oversees the Justice Department’s $3.1 billion IT portfolio and leads the agency’s tech and cybersecurity programs, told FedScoop recently that she hopes to make significant improvements to DOJ’s IT service desk program through new and recompeted contracts that will deploy cutting edge AI technologies. 

“I think something as basic as our service desk, that’s an area where we can have lots of opportunities for improvement [using AI]. And our IT service desk is just one of those areas where it’s hard to get it smooth and clean and so if I would start anywhere with AI, I would probably start there to help improve our user experience,” Rogers told FedScoop during a wide-ranging interview at the Justice Department headquarters earlier this month.  

“So we’re recompeting our IT service desk contract … but I want to be very intentional on how we go about deploying our service desk so that I can have the opportunity to bring in some artificial intelligence and make it a better customer experience,” Rogers said. 

Rogers said that the Justice Department could look to certain companies in the private sector that have excelled at IT customer service as examples of how to successfully overhaul its own program.

“For example, American Express, they have a pretty well-honed, good customer IT experience where you can chat with their reps easily online and it’s fast and super responsive. So that’s one area where we need to be more like American Express,” said Rogers.

“I could do a great job on the backend IT infrastructure stuff or our analytics or whatnot, but if I can’t get the basic customer-facing customer service desk stuff right, then I don’t think I can build the trust with people,” she added.

Rogers, who has been CIO at the Justice Department since 2020 and was CISO within the agency for eight years prior to that, started her career with Bank of America and Equifax in the private sector. She has a bachelor’s degree in economics from George Mason University and an MBA focused on marketing and finance from Emory University.

As Justice recompetes its IT service desk contract, Rogers wants the resulting contract to be more intentional and broken apart into smaller pieces rather than “a lot of different services all sort of swept into one master vehicle, which is how we’ve typically done it.”

Leidos is the incumbent holding the current contractor to support Justice’s service desk work.

She added that some sub-departments or components within the Justice Department have had success in deploying AI or other cutting-edge technologies when choosing to work with a smaller contractor.

“We’ve often had success going with smaller firms in the Beltway because maybe they have a little bit more attention to detail and a little more skin in the game, they push for that good customer experience,” said Rogers.

“Sometimes with larger firms, it’s more of a body shop, right? They just want buttcheeks in seats. And for me, it’s not just cheeks in seats. You need to know who the VIPs are when they call our phones and the system has to have gold stars next to that person so they don’t have to say can you spell ‘Garland’ for me,” Rogers said referring to Attorney General Merrick Garland. “You can’t have that.”

Rogers pointed out a frustrating personal experience she had with the need to constantly change her network password within the DOJ a few years ago, which she said was tiresome, didn’t work and pushed her to make customer experience a top priority as CIO.

“I’ve had some not-pleasant user experiences internally. And I work in IT and I thought it was, you know, cumbersome, right? It was not elegant. So my desire is to take our service desk to a place of elegance,” Rogers said.

Justice isn’t the only federal agency making customer experience — whether that’s internal or external customers — a top priority. The White House issued an executive order in late 2021 directing agencies that provide high-impact public services to make CX a top priority.

Just this week, the Navy announced a new initiative by which it — similar to what Justice is planning to do — will use AI to power a chatbot to support its IT help desk.

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The just released DOD Cyber Workforce Strategy aims to provide a roadmap for how the department will grow and keep a cyber workforce in an increasingly competitive field amid a global shortage of cyber talent that organizations are vying to recruit and retain.

Officials frequently decry how they can’t compete with private sector salaries, bemoaning the fact that the department spends the time and energy to train personnel, only to lose them years later to industry.

In a changing environment, officials want to adapt the personnel system to make it easier for people to enter government, leave for industry to gain additional experience and perspectives, and possibly come back.

“Permeability, the ability to move between the different sectors — there has to be a change,” Patrick Johnson, director of the workforce innovation directorate for the DOD Chief Information Officer, told reporters Thursday. “We want to move on rewarding longevity … to a system or allow for individuals to go out for three years and come back without penalty and make those transitions back and forth. We’re looking at ways how can we allow them to go out and become more developed [with] capability, experience and skill sets they’re not receiving here and then how can we benefit by bringing them back in at a later time.”

The strategy will examine this, Johnson said, noting the forthcoming implementation plan will lay out how the department moves forward.

“How we can partner with industry, do rotational assignments. If someone goes, how do we keep tabs so we’re constantly reaching back to them and saying, ‘Hey, there’s an opportunity to come back, would you consider coming back, and here’s what we can do for you,’” he said.

Others explained the National Guard and reserve components could be a useful track for those looking to come in and out of government, on the uniformed side.

“On the military side, the ability when you leave the military to go into the reserves or National Guard and then work whatever job skill you’re working in there. And then how do we access that to bring you back onto active duty, for instance, for shorter periods of time?” Mark Gorak, principal director for resources and analysis for the DOD Chief Information Officer, said during the press briefing. “You could be for a project focused a month, two months, or a year even — and how do we make that more easily accessible and how do we track that talent across the department is some of the areas we’ll be looking at.”

Gorak noted that the Pentagon wants to maintain relationships with those that leave the department because it might be working with them in another capacity later down the road.

“We train the talent, we bring them in, we give them experience, we give them a great mission. And if they choose to leave, we want to maintain those relationships to have that flow back and forth because they could be back with us for detail or for a small project or even come back as a contractor,” he said. “I view that as the one team, one fight national challenge.”

Officials said on the uniformed side, there aren’t many issues with recruiting when it comes to cyber. The challenge is retaining service members, as well as recruiting and retaining civilian staff.

“There has to be a cultural shift in the department in how we acquire talent and how we manage it,” Johnson said. “We do a very good job … on the military side, [although] there’s always room for improvement. But on the civilian side, we have to fundamentally change how we manage that talent and look at it from an enterprise.”

The key is identifying the workforce, he added.

The strategy aims to use data to tackle workforce shortfalls and provide decision-makers better informed metrics.

“We’re making data-driven decisions in how we manage this workforce. And then when we go back and we say to the services and we say to our components, ‘We need to increase here, we need to increase there,’ it’s not us going down and forcing an issue,” Johnson said. “It’s highlighting a clear problem and having the data to allow leadership to make the decisions they need and then providing the tools and mechanisms they need to do it.”

The strategy lists four pillars for improving DOD’s workforce. They include: identifying workforce needs and requirements; recruiting the talent needed; developing and understanding individual and team performance requirements; and retaining by creating incentive programs.

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According to two people familiar with the matter, Sieger is leaving her current post overseeing all information technology systems at the tax collection agency.

She has formally held the role since last February when she was appointed to the position after carrying it out on an acting basis since 2019.

Previously, Sieger served as deputy CIO for filing season and tax reform, in which capacity she led the technology changes needed to deliver the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which was approved by Congress in December 2017.

She has held other IT leadership roles at IRS, including as acting deputy CIO for operations and as associate CIO for applications development. Before joining the tax division’s IT organization, she served in several headquarters and field positions.

Sieger graduated from the IRS 2004 Executive Development Class, promotes workplace diversity and received a FedScoop 50 award for federal leadership.

Her departure comes amid the 2023 tax season, during which more than 168 million individual tax returns are expected to be filed ahead of the April 18 deadline.

Current Treasury Deputy CIO Jeff King will take on the role of Internal Revenue Service chief information officer on an acting basis.

A Treasury Department spokesperson confirmed Sieger’s appointment as Treasury CTO.

Editor’s note: This story was updated with further details about Sieger’s new appointment.

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Baldwin previously served as the Assistant Administrator for Information and Technology Services, and the CIO, at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). In that role, she was responsible for the delivery of all IT services and products at that Department of Transportation agency.

“Kristen brings extensive experience developing IT strategies and services that are both effective and efficient,” Acting Comptroller of the Currency Michael Hsu said in a statement earlier this month. “We are fortunate to have her leadership and expertise at the OCC.”

Baldwin moved from the FAA’s parent department, the Department of Transportation, to the top IT position of the FAA in February 2020, just before the pandemic hit. She was the deputy CIO of DOT and brought an appreciation of how the larger department and FAA could collaborate. 

Prior to joining the FAA, she held several leadership positions within DOT, serving as Deputy CIO and as Associate CIO for IT Policy and Oversight. Baldwin also served as the Director of the Resource Management Office for the Office of the Chief Information Officer.

She previously played a role in the Transportation Department’s Open Government effort and served as a senior accountable official for the Office of Management and Budget’s PortfolioStat program.

Baldwin holds a bachelors degree from the University of Virginia and a masters in information systems from George Washington University.

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McIntire has been with the EEOC for over 34 years and most recently served as deputy chief information officer.

She first joined the agency in 1988 as a database and Unix programmer within its Office of Information Technology.

Since then, she has held posts including director of the Charge Data System Division and director of the Technology Planning and Management Division. She also served as the agency’s chief information security officer for 16 years.

Commenting on her appointment to the Senior Executive Service position, EEOC Chair Charlotte Burrows said: “The EEOC is fortunate to have Pierrette McIntire in this important role … [h]er experience, expertise, and commitment to our mission make her well equipped to guide the continued growth and evolution of the EEOC’s technology programs.”

McIntire said: “We have a great team at the EEOC, and strong partnerships both inside and outside the government … I look forward to working together to further the EEOC’s mission through the continuous improvement of technology.”

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“The Blanket Purchase Agreement (BPA) … will provide the Department of the Navy (DON) access to Amazon Web Services’ commercial cloud environment, which can process and store data that meets both Department of Defense (DOD) and DON information assurance policies,” Charlie Spirtos, a Navy spokesperson, said. “This collaboration with AWS will ensure that the Navy’s networks are modernized, secure, and capable of providing our Sailors and Marines with the enterprise network architecture required for mission success.”

A Dec. 19 contract announcement stated work on the contract will be performed for a maximum of five years and funds will be obligated as task orders are issued under a variety of funding types to include operation and maintenance, other procurement and working capital funds.

“We are proud to continue our support for the Department of the Navy and are committed to enabling their critical mission by delivering innovative, efficient, scalable, and secure cloud services,” Liz Martin, director of Defense Department business at AWS, said in a statement.

In recent policies issued by the Navy and DOD, mission owners must migrate from on-premise enterprise data products to commercial cloud environments with the assumption that such providers will be better equipped to provide them than the government.

A 2020 memo signed by the assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition and CIO created a policy for the accelerated promotion and acquisition of cloud services.

The Navy’s information superiority vision mandates the service to modernize, innovate and defend as well as migrate applications to the cloud.  

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Lopez has worked at the department since 2017 and will start as CIO on Dec. 18.

Previously, Lopez was director of enterprise technology services, in which post he worked as principal advisor to the CIO for IT engineering and operational issues and helped to oversee the department’s $1 billion technology portfolio.

Lopez takes over the CIO role from Gary Stevens, who has been carrying it out on an acting basis since the departure of Jason Gray in August. Gray’s departure was first revealed by FedScoop, and he has since joined USAID as CIO.

Before joining the Department of Education, Lopez held various leadership roles at the Defense Health Agency, including that of chief engineer and chief of operations at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.

Commenting on his appointment, Deputy Secretary of Education Cindy Marten said: “I am very pleased to congratulate Luis R. Lopez on his appointment as Chief Information Officer at the U.S. Department of Education.”

“He brings deep experience and proven skill in delivering information technology services in large and complex government organizations – and leading IT transformations that ensure those organizations continue to adapt effectively for the people they serve,” she added.

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