Military Health System to Name a Permanent CIO. Finally.

The Military Health System has been without a Chief Information Officer since Charles Campbell was exiled on one of those career limiting temporary assignments in the Pentagon bureaucracy 15 months ago.

Since then, MHS has filled the slot with a bunch of acting CIOs from inside the system, including Mary Ann Rockey, from August 2010 until February 2011; Army Col. Portia Prioleau, from February 2011 until the first week of September 2011; and now Dr. Karen Guice, the current acting CIO.

MHS has now decided to stop spinning folks into and out of the Acting CIO slot, and is in the process of hiring a permanent one, spokesman Austin Camacho told me.

This is one of the most important CIO jobs in the entire Defense Department, and I hope that a nationwide search is being conducted to hire from far outside the insular MHS bureaucracy -- and all its industry pals -- but, alas, I hear it may already be done, an inside deal.