Richard Spires serves as chief information officer at the Department of Homeland Security, where he oversees the department’s $6.8 billion information technology investment portfolio.
Spires, appointed CIO in September 2009, also leads and facilitates portfolio management, development, implementation and maintenance of the department’s IT architecture.
He spoke to a AFCEA chapter event in May on the department’s consolidation initiative across 22 agencies (click here for more coverage of that initiative).
He serves as chairman of both the DHS Chief Information Officer Council and the Enterprise Architecture Board, and is a member of the Federal CIO Council, where he was selected vice chairman in January 2011.
Spires also serves as co-chair of the council’s Federal Data Center Consolidation Task Force and previously co-chaired the Management Best Practices Committee.
Between 2004 and 2008, he held several positions at the Internal Revenue Service including deputy commissioner for operations support, where he was responsible for support and administrative functions including IT, human capital, finance, shared services, real estate and security functions.
Before becoming deputy commissioner, Spires served as CIO of the IRS, where he held overall strategic and operational responsibility for a $2 billion budget and a 7,000-person modernization and information technology services organization.
He was also responsible as CIO for maintaining more than 400 systems administering nearly 200 million taxpayer records and supporting more than 100,000 IRS employees.
Spires also served for two-and-half-years as the associate CIO for applications development and led the IRS’ business systems modernization program.
His private sector experience includes three years as president, chief operating officer and director of business intelligence software provider Mantas, where he also led efforts to raise $29 million in venture funding.
Prior to Mantas, he spent a 16-year career at SRA International and held technical and managerial positions.
Spires holds bachelor’s degrees in electrical engineering and a mathematical sciences from the University of Cincinnati, where he was named a distinguished alumnus by the college of engineering in 2006.
He also holds a master’s degree in electrical Eengineering from the George Washington University.