USDS veterans tapped to head OPM IT shop

The Office of Personnel Management has tapped a pair of U.S. Digital Service veterans to join the agency as its new IT leaders.

Clare Martorana will take over as CIO of the personnel agency, and David Nesting will serve as her deputy.

"Ms. Martorana and Mr. Nesting bring tremendous digital expertise to OPM," acting OPM Director Margaret Weichert said in a statement. "I am confident their experience and transformative vision will significantly contribute to our mission to modernize our infrastructure and deliver better services to the American people."

Martorana, whose most recent role was a USDS digital service expert, will succeed David Garcia, who was appointed as OPM CIO in Oct. 2017.

In her time at USDS, Martorana worked on the Department of Veterans Affairs' digital modernization, and was the team and product lead on the Vets.gov project.

Before joining government, Matorana worked for Everyday Health Inc., a digital health and wellness company, as well as the health information site WebMD.

Nesting has served at USDS as a site reliability engineer and director of engineering. Among the projects he's worked on are healthcare.gov, login.gov and the Department of Education's college scorecard. Nesting's private sector experience includes time at Google and AT&T.

The announcement did not specify Garcia's future plans.

"Personally, I am grateful for Mr. Garcia's steady hand and commitment to our CIO team and its mission during a time of great change. It has been a pleasure to work alongside him," Weichert said. "Through his leadership, OPM has made critical updates and improvements, resulting in stronger, more efficient systems. We are grateful for the impact Mr. Garcia has made on the agency during his tenure and wish him well."

The two enter OPM as the agency seeks to create a single employee digital record for federal employees, and continues to recover from the breach that exposed millions of federal records.