USDA CIO Smith to leave

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USDA CIO Smith to leave

Chris Smith is moving on after more than three years as the Agriculture Department\'s lead technology manager. He helped make major change to the agency\'s...

Jason Miller@jmillerWFED

March 8, 2012 6:04 pm

1 min read

Agriculture Department Chief Information Officer Chris Smith is leaving.

Industry sources confirm Smith told his staff earlier this week. He didn’t say where he would be going.

Sources say his last day would be at the end of March.

USDA Deputy CIO Charles McClam is expected to take over on interim basis.

Smith has been USDA CIO since December 2008 and has been with the department since 2007 when he was the CIO of the Rural Development Agency.

He also has worked at the General Services Administration as the director of IT for the chief financial officer’s office.

Along with his civilian service, Smith has been with the Air Force or Air National Guard for more than 25 years.

During his time as USDA CIO, Smith led major departmentwide upgrade and consolidation initiatives, including moving 120,000 employees to the cloud for email.

He focused on five areas: mission-focused, business-driven solutions; unified architecture and infrastructure; proactive stewardship of IT; cybersecurity; and the technology workforce.

Smith also has been active on the CIO Council and frequent contributor to the federal community. On the CIO Council, he currently leads the Best Practices Committee and also has led the Workforce Committee.

USDA ready to move e-mail to Microsoft cloud