McCormack to be next DHS CIO

The White House on Oct. 24 tapped Luke McCormack, a former IT executive at the Department of Homeland Security’s immigration and border protection agencies, to become DHS's top CIO.

McCormack has been rumored for weeks to be the leading candidate to fill the DHS CIO position last held by Richard Spires. Margie Graves has been acting CIO since March 15, when Spires went on leave from the position after four years of service. Spires resigned in May after two months leave that remain largely unexplained.

McCormack is currently the CIO and deputy assistant attorney general for information resources management at the Justice Department, a post he has held since February 2012.

The DHS nomination chips away at the nagging number of top-level management vacancies that have beleaguered the department in recent months. DHS still has more than a dozen such positions left unfilled -- and the Internal Revenue Service announced on Oct. 24 that it was hiring away DHS CFO Peggy Sherry, effective Nov. 4 -- but the last month has seen efforts to fill some of those vacancies either permanently or temporarily.

In fact, McCormack’s nod comes just days after the White House moved to fill the vacant top leadership slot at DHS. On Oct. 17 President Barack Obama nominated former Defense Department General Counsel Jeh Johnson to replace Janet Napolitano.

When McCormack’s name began circulating in September as a potential CIO candidate, sources familiar with DHS praised the choice, saying his previous work t Immigration and Customs Enforcement – where he was CIO from 2005 to 2012 -- gives him valuable experience with its parent agency, its IT leadership and operations.

He also previously served at Customs and Border Protection as acting director of infrastructure services division from 2004 to 2005, director of architecture and engineering from 2002 to 2003, and director of systems engineering from 1999 to 2002.

Before joining the federal government, according to the White House announcement, McCormack worked at various private sector companies, including MCI and Ford Aerospace.