Evans to replace Forman at OMB

CAMBRIDGE, Md. - Energy Department CIO Karen Evans will replace Mark Forman as the head of federal IT, an Office of Management and Budget official said today.Evans will take over as OMB’s associate administrator for IT and e-government next month, said Clay Johnson, OMB’s deputy director for management, at the IRMCO conference in Cambridge, Md.Johnson said OMB interviewed “a couple” of people for the position, but “Karen became our focus from the beginning because she was so highly regarded.”Evans, who spent 19 months as the Energy CIO, will take over the government’s top IT post as 25 Quicksilver e-government initiatives are nearing completion, and the next wave of projects are in the planning stages.In addition to guiding the e-government projects, Evans’ priorities will include maintaining the discipline agencies have adopted in the IT planning and budgeting process.“No one is better equipped to get that done than she is,” Johnson said.At Energy, Evans oversaw a push for employing project managers on major programs. “Everyone agrees that we need to be good stewards of the public’s money, so that we are achieving the outcomes of these projects in support of each agency or department mission,” Evans said in an this spring with PostNewsweek Tech Media.Before joining the department, she was director of the IRM division in the Justice Department’s Office of Justice Programs. She also was assistant director for information services at Justice headquarters, responsible for Internet resources.Evans is the vice chairwoman of the Federal CIO Council, the principal forum for agency CIOs to develop recommendations for federal IT management policy, procedures and standards. She has a bachelor's degree in chemistry and an MBA from West Virginia University.Forman, who joined OMB as the first head of federal IT and e-government efforts in June 2000, resigned his post last month to join an IT start-up in California. The associate administrator post is a presidential appointment but does not require Senate approval, Johnson said. (Posted 9:04 a.m., updated 9:53 a.m.)