OMB names Paul as chief architect

The Office of Management and Budget today named Kshemendra Paul as its new chief architect.

Paul had been on a three-month detail as acting chief architect since October when Dick Burk retired. He becomes the third full-time chief architect since the Bush administration created the position in 2002.

"We are excited for Kshemendra to join our team," said Karen Evans, OMB's administrator for information technology and e-government. "His experience with the National Information Exchange Model will bring a lot to bear and he will bring consensus to a lot of issues."

Paul had been chief architect at the Justice Department and co-chairman of the Services Subcommittee of the CIO Council’s Architecture and Infrastructure Committee, which will analyze how agencies use shared services and service-oriented architecture. The subcommittee will also develop best practices for sharing hardware and software.

"Kshemendra first came to my attention when he initiated [with Mike Daconta] the National Information Exchange Model (NIEM), a cross-agency effort to share criminal justice data among DHS, Justice and all the state and local government law enforcement agencies....no mean feat," said Burk.

Burk added that Paul is an effective leader and more technically grounded that he was, which is an important attribute now.

Paul also has been a leader in implementing segment architecture, which OMB mandated to help agencies understand how enterprise architecture can solve business challenges.

As chief architect, he will lead the continued advancement of segment architecture across government, keep the five reference models updated, oversee the implementation of the Federal Transition Framework and continue to push agencies to integrate their enterprise architectures into their investment review and capital planning processes.