Robert Carey serves as principal deputy chief information officer at the Defense Department, where he helps lead consolidation and standardization efforts for the defense information technology enterprise, cybersecurity posture and enterprise architecture.
Carey, who has held this post since October 2010, also aligns and manages the office of the CIO to help lead the IT and cyber workforce into the 21st century.
He is also an active member of the Navy Reserve, where he serves in the Civil Engineer Corps and holds the captain rank. He served in active duty for the 1991 and 2003 wars in Iraq, including one year in the Al Anbar province with I Marine Expeditionary Force.
For four years prior to his current position, he served as CIO for the Department of the Navy and led initiatives involving transformation, enterprise services, Internet usage and information security. He joined the department’s CIO’s staff in February 2010 and served as team leader of e-business for three years
Carey joined the Senior Executive Service in June 2003 as the department’s deputy CIO, where he led the staff in achieving information management and IT enterprise integration across the Navy and Marine Corps.
He also led the department’s smart card office for seven months in 2001.
In October 1982, Carey began his federal service career as a test director for the U.S. Army, working at Aberdeen Proving Ground and evaluating small arms, automatic weapons and ammunition.
Nearly two-and-a-half years later, he joined the Naval Sea Systems Command in the anti-submarine and undersea warfare domain and held several engineering and leadership positions.
Carey is a recipient of two Department of the Navy Distinguished Civilian Service Awards, Superior and Meritorious Civilian Service Awards, three Federal 100 Awards, a Defense Executive Year Award from GCN and a Executive Leadership-Defense Award from the Association for Federal Information Resources Management.
Information Week has selected him three times to its Top 50 Government CIOs list.
Carey holds a bachelor’s degree in engineering from the University of South Carolina and a master’s degree in engineering management from George Washington University.