Army CIO Sorenson to retire

Budget

Army CIO Sorenson to retire

The general spent more than 37 years in the service, including the last three as CIO. Mike Kreiger will be the acting CIO in the interim. Sorenson led several e...

Federal News Network Staff

November 9, 2010 3:40 pm

2 min read

By Jason Miller
Executive Editor
Federal News Radio

Army Chief Information Officer Lt. Gen. Jeff Sorenson will retire Friday.

Sorenson announced his decision Nov. 5 after more than 37 years in the service.

Mike Krieger will be the acting CIO until a new one is named, and Maj. Gen. Mark Bowman will be the acting deputy CIO. Krieger has been the deputy CIO since July 2008.

Sorenson has been CIO for more than three years.

“We have come a long way to reshape the network enterprise strategy,” he said in a release. “And I believe the CIO is on the cusp of delivering significant network capabilities to the warfighter through all our enterprise initiatives.”

Gen. Peter Chiarelli, the Army Vice Chief of Staff, presided over the retirement ceremony attended by more than 400 people last week.

Sorenson has been one of the most forward-leaning CIOs in the government during his tenure. He led several major initiatives to transform the way the Army uses technology and delivers it to the warfighter.

Sorenson led the first Apps for the Army contest asking servicemen and women to develop mobile software for hand-held devices. The Army received 25 apps in eight different areas.

He also led the effort to move the Army’s e-mail to a cloud run by the Defense Information Systems Agency as a test case for the rest of the Defense Department.

Additionally, Sorenson was the driving force behind the Army’s data center consolidation program through the Area Processing Centers and the broad LandWarNet program to help modernize the service’s technology.

Recently, Sorenson co-signed with Malcolm O’Neill, the assistant secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology (ALT), that called for a set of computing technologies and standards to enable secure and interoperable applications to be rapidly developed and executed across a variety of computing environments: server, client, mobile devices, sensors and platforms.

In early 2011 ALT will publish a complementary implementation plan that describes the steps and schedule for bringing Army systems into compliance with the guidance.

The memo is a byproduct of the Apps for the Army contest showing that agile software development was not only possible, but could be achieved.