Zients to head Obama's economic team

Jeffrey Zients, a former acting director of the Office of Management and Budget, is rejoining President Barack Obama’s economic team as director of the National Economic Council. He will replace Gene Sperling, who has been in the post since 2011 and plans to leave at the end of this year.

Zients jointed the administration in 2009 as deputy director for management and chief performance officer at OMB. He is best known in the federal IT community for his plan to reform the way government acquires and uses technology, launched in conjunction with then-CIO Vivek Kundra. Among other things, the plan instituted the federal "cloud first" policy and launched TechStat, the precursor to the PortfolioStat reviews that grade the performance of federal agency and component CIOs.

As head of the National Economic Council, Zients will be charged with coordinating economic advice from various sources to the president, and tracking the implementation of economic policy. The post does not require confirmation by the Senate.

"Jeff has a sterling reputation as a business leader, and he earned the admiration and respect of everyone he worked with during his four years in leadership positions at the Office of Management and Budget," Obama said in a statement.

Before joining the administration, Zients was CEO and chairman of the Advisory Board Company and chairman of the Corporate Executive Board, two business consulting firms founded by entrepreneur David Bradley. He also served stints at consultancies Mercer and Bain.

Zients left the administration when current OMB Director Sylvia Mathews Burwell was confirmed in April of this year. Since then, he was worked as managing director of Portfolio Logic Management, a Washington, D.C., health care investment firm he founded.