Nextgov/FCW reported Friday that Jane Rathbun, the Department of the Navy’s chief information officer, is retiring after a more than three-decade career in national security.
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“It is with gratitude, pride, and humility that I close out this chapter of my career as a civil servant,” Rathbun, a two-time Wash100 awardee, said in a LinkedIn post published Thursday.
As the Navy CIO, she aligns IT investment priorities with the secretary of the Navy’s priorities and oversees the execution of the department’s Information Superiority Vision.
Her key focus areas include zero trust architecture, cyber readiness, transition to the cloud and enterprise services delivery.
Who Is Jane Rathbun?
Before becoming CIO, Rathbun served as deputy assistant secretary of the Navy for information warfare and enterprise services and chief technology officer. In this dual-hatted role, she served as the service’s IT acquisition workforce champion and led software and cyber acquisition reforms.
She previously served as deputy director for defense business systems within the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment and was responsible for shaping the acquisition process for the department’s enterprise IT infrastructure services and defense business platforms.
Her government career also included time as acting division chief for the strategic capabilities and analysis division within U.S. Africa Command; special assistant to the director of portfolio systems acquisition for program management within the Office of the Secretary of Defense; and change management specialist at NASA.
Earlier in her career, the 2025 Wash100 awardee served as an operations research analyst at the Department of Defense.
The John Carroll University political science graduate has a master’s degree in public administration from Syracuse University’s Maxwell School.
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