State CIO to step down

State Department CIO Frontis Wiggins will retire from government service on Dec. 8 after a 32-year career. Principal deputy CIO Robert Adams will take over as acting CIO.

As head of State's Information Resource Management Bureau, Wiggins is responsible for providing IT services to the agency's Washington, D.C., headquarters and 260 overseas missions. He's directly responsible for the IRM budget of $569 million. Wiggins has been State's top tech official since July 2016.

Like many agencies, State has struggled with the demands of implementing the Federal IT Acquisition Reform Act. Under Wiggins' leadership, State has received very low marks on the FITARA scorecard issued by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, but in the most recent round of grades, State scored a C- mark, which was up from a low of a D- in December 2016. The department also was among just four out of 24 covered agencies to rate an A in both CIO authority enhancements and transparency and risk management.

On Nov. 16, Wiggins published a Vision for an Innovative Department of State on LinkedIn. In that post, he called for more cross-functional teams and fewer "inward facing" silos, a move to more agile decision-making and less bureaucratic red tape.