McClure: 'Definitely, I'm not done yet'

Today, David McClure and his wife Trish are in their motor home, embarking on a five-week road trip through New England and eastern Canada. On the evening of June 3, however, they were in the basement of Hill Country BBQ, where dozens of longtime colleagues and other leaders of the federal IT community gathered to praise and roast the just-retired head of the General Services Administration's Office of Citizen Services and Innovative Technologies.

"FedRAMP would not have happened" without McClure's leadership, former Department of Homeland Security CIO Richard Spires declared. Mark Forman, the first federal administrator for e-Government and IT, said, "Dave has been the principle thought leader" for every major piece of IT legislation in the past 20 years. Karen Evans, who succeeded Forman in that post, praised McClure for guidance that she said was critical to her success -- a role that virtually everyone who took the stage said McClure had played for them as well.  

Kathy Conrad and Martha Dorris, two of McClure's principle deputies at OCSIT, presented the requisite gag gifts -- including "tech-guy fancy socks" that unfortunately came after federal CIO Steven VanRoekel had slipped out the door -- and gave their former boss plenty of ribbing about his "luxury motor coach." But after various speakers had labeled McClure as "dangerous," "dapper," "demon" and "da Vinci Dave," Conrad's alliteration was simple: "The reality is, he's just a delightful guy."

McClure, whose final day in government was May 30, made clear that he would be returning to federal IT soon enough -- though he said part of his road-trip agenda would be to think about "who I'm going to work with."

Too many interesting challenges in federal IT remain for him to stay on the road for too long, McClure said. "Definitely, I'm not done yet."

Note: This article was updated on June 4 to correct the spelling of Conrad's first name.