Chief Architects chairman changes agencies

Ira Grossman, chairman of the Chief Architects Forum, plans to transfer from his chief architect position at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to the same position at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

Grossman, who has served as NOAA’s chief architect since 1999, expects to join the FDIC June 12.

Salary terms were agreed on yesterday, Grossman said today.

“It was not easy because I love NOAA. We’ve come a long way as far as developing a federated enterprise architecture” for NOAA and its parent agency, the Commerce Department, he said.

However, NOAA’s funding for enterprise architecture is limited by the agency’s spending on certification and accreditation reports.

“Contrasting that to FDIC, which is blessed with resources...I think I can do more to advance the discipline of enterprise architecture at FDIC than I can at NOAA,” Grossman said.

He hopes to conduct an independent audit of FDIC’s enterprise architecture his first week on the job to gain an objective perspective on its progress.

Grossman said he negotiated to keep his leadership responsibilities at the Chief Architects Forum. He said he hopes the new position will give him the opportunity to educate people further about the maturing field of enterprise architecture.

“If you go to Amazon.com and type in ‘enterprise architecture,’ you’ll see there aren’t a lot of textbooks,” he said.

Grossman will report directly to Gail Verley, assistant director of FDIC’s Enterprise Architecture Program Section. FDIC’s chief information officer is Michael Bartell.

Verley said today she could not comment on Grossman’s hiring because no paperwork has been signed yet.