Anne Reed to retire Feb. 1

Anne Reed, chief information officer at the Agriculture Department, said she plans to retire from government next year.

Reed, who took over as the USDA's CIO in 1996, said she plans to leave government Feb. 1, as long as there are no unresolved Year 2000 problems. "It's time for me to begin to make contributions in a new way," Reed said, but she did not disclose her plans.

In addition to managing a $1.2 billion information technology budget, Reed has faced tough issues as the USDA's CIO, including rolling out a long-criticized modernization program to many distributed bureaus that are accustomed to going their own way. She also placed a moratorium on IT purchases and defended the award of the Federal Aviation Administration's $250 million Integrated Computing Environment-Mainframe and Networking contract to the USDA.

Congress continues to propose that Reed be given budget authority over IT purchases in the agency, which would be a first for a federal CIO.