David Chow: Housing and Urban Development Dept Eyes Cybersecurity for Sixth Center of Excellence

David Chow, chief information officer at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, told Nextgov in an interview published Wednesday that HUD is in discussions with the General Services Administration to establish a new center of excellence focused cybersecurity.

“There have been talks—preliminary conversations—about looking into some sort of a cybersecurity assessment,” Chow told the publication.

“GSA has been working very closely with [the Homeland Security Department] to look for ways or opportunities that we could potentially create the sixth CoE and make sure we can really go through our security assessments.”

GSA selected HUD to serve as the second host agency for the five CoEs that intend to advance information technology modernization across cloud adoption, infrastructure optimization, customer experience, contact centers and service delivery analytics areas.

Chow, who joined HUD in August, said he expects the CoE program’s initial phase to run for up to eight months and hopes to enter the second phase by the second half of 2019.

He noted that he intends to see initial results in the first six months of phase 2 and expects the agency to complete the program within two years to 30 months from now.