More CIO execs to leave USDA

The exodus from the Agriculture Department continues with Jerry Williams, deputy chief information officer, and Chris Niedermayer, associate CIO for information and technology management, announcing they are leaving in February. Williams will move to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, where he has conditionally accepted a position to be director of financial improvement under Chief Financial Officer Janice Lambert, he said. Niedermayer will go to the Patent and Trademark Office, where as program manager, he will lead the transformation of information technology governance processes for the agency’s IT investments under CIO David Freeland, he said. Williams was also acting CIO earlier this year following the resignation of CIO Dave Combs. Chuck Christopherson is USDA’s CIO in addition to being chief financial officer. The departures of Williams and Niedermayer next month follow that of other senior managers in the CIO office in recent months. Robert Suda, who was associate CIO for integration and operations, left to become acting director of the Transportation Department’s Volpe Center, the innovation center for the department’s Research and Innovative Technology Administration, effective today. Kathleen Rundle, associate CIO for operations, retires this month. Williams, who has been deputy CIO since 2005, has led department initiatives to support IT security and financial management. Before joining USDA, he was acting CIO and deputy CIO at the Small Business Administration. He also served as chief of the Federal Financial Management Systems Branch at the Office of Management and Budget, leading the development of governmentwide financial systems policies and improvement strategies. Williams also wrote the case study for payroll consolidation across government. “For both of us, we’ve added value to USDA,” Williams said. “A number of things we’ve done are foundational and should set the stage for this department to do a host of things across the board, whether it’s IT governance or operations here at USDA.” As chief technology officer, Niedermayer, an IT leader inside and outside the department, built up USDA’s governance processes, enterprise architecture, capital planning and investment control, and cybersecurity. He has led the governmentwide executive committees for the Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12 and for E-Authentication. He also is current president of the Association for Federal Information Resources Management. ““We brought up a single sign-on authentication solution. We’ve led the federal government in design and implementation of HSPD-12, which really is a complement to our e-authentication services,” Niedermayer said. “We brought greater transparency as to where our IT investment dollars are spent and a new focus to security by integrating security up front rather than as an afterthought in the life cycle of a system.”