Richard Spires, chief information officer of the Department of Homeland Security, has been elected vice chairman of the federal CIO council, a cross-agency conclave devoted to best practices in federal IT management.
U.S. Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra made the announcement at a recent Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association conference, Federal Computer Week reported.
The federal agency-level CIO was created by congressional mandate, the 1996 Clinger-Cohen Act, which sought to provide a comprehensive approach for streamlining federal IT management by concentrating authority in agency-level IT leaders.
The CIO Council was later created by executive order and enshrined in law a few years later by the 2002 E-Government Act.
As vice chairman, Spires joins fellow council leaders Kundra and Jeffrey Zients, deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget.
Spires was elected to his position by a vote of the council’s membership, FCW reported, the dozens of fellow federal CIOs from more than 30 departments and agencies that make up the council.
Recently, the CIO Council has been helping to navigate the shifting waters of federal IT as Kundra makes high-profile pitches for reform, including changes to acquisition and setting guidance for the government’s migration to cloud-computing services and applications.
