Gundeep Ahluwalia, the Labor Department’s chief information officer, is leaving federal service after eight years in the role and more than 12 in the government.

Ahluwalia told staff in an email, obtained by Federal News Network, that his last day would be Friday.

“Most of you know, I am rarely short on words, but it is times like this that I struggle to capture my gratitude and emotions in words. How do I thank a group of incredible professionals who have allowed me to lead them for eight years, folks who have always put people first, and mission always? How do I thank a group of people who took a leap of faith with me as we stretched our goals and asked others to follow along an unknown path where the success was not guaranteed?” Ahluwalia wrote. “We created a digital infrastructure at DoL that was stress tested during the pandemic and came out with flying colors. It was a proud day when I received a request from a DoL employee for a second laptop, so his wife, a federal employee at another agency, could use one of our laptops to get ‘things done fast.’”

Ahluwalia didn’t say where he was going next. Federal News Network has confirmed that Labor Department deputy CIO Louis Charlier will take over as acting CIO on an interim basis.

During his tenure at Labor, Ahluwalia solved a host of long-term issues that plagued the agency. He loves to tell the story about bringing his young daughter to work and when she asked what the WiFi password was, he had to tell her they didn’t have WiFi.

Implementing WiFi was a simple, but important piece to Labor’s IT modernization effort over the last eight years.

“Our successes in creating novel funding mechanisms, Technology Modernization Funding wins, legendary TechDay, creating resilient infrastructure, websites, applications, mobile applications, data infrastructure, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence and emerging technologies are all things I can talk about for days! From improving the workman compensation program delivery to enabling digitization of the labor certification programs, we have partnered with our mission areas on so much!” Ahluwalia wrote. “I would argue that we not only came up with world class digital solutions but when warranted, we created non-digital pathways as well, like the Unemployment Insurance National Identity Service using our partnership with the Postal Service. We have learned not only to think like technologists but also to create digital and non-digital pathways that are focused on American citizens and employers.”

Alhuwalia and his team faced big challenges because 90% of Labor’s IT budget, which is now at $939 million, went to legacy systems. That breakdown between operations and maintenance (O&M), and development, modernization and enhancement (DME) is now down to a much more manageable 74% to 26% for fiscal 2024.

To help accelerate DoL’s IT modernization efforts, Alhuwalia turned to the TMF funding source and won six awards from the board since 2018. The most recent TMF Board investment came in April for $42 million for Labor’s Office of Workers’ Compensation Programs (OWCP), which will use the money to accelerate the replacement of its outdated Integrated Federal Employee Compensation System (iFECS).

He also collected unused year end funding and moved it into the agency’s working capital fund to help pay for further technology updates.

Labor also has closed 80 data centers, embraced the cloud with more than 80 applications residing in commercial providers, implemented cloud-based cybersecurity capabilities and saw the continued maturation of the agency’s enterprise data platform, which already is in the cloud, and the tools that run on top of it.

One of the biggest continuing efforts under Alhuwalia is the modernization of more than 500 business applications. The CIO’s office is looking across all 27 bureaus with the ability to find commonality and improve the efficiency of operations.

Ahluwalia joined the federal government in 2012 as the deputy director of business informatics at the Food and Drug Administration. He joined Labor four years later as its deputy CIO. He became CIO two months later.

Before coming to the FDA, Ahluwalia worked in the private sector.

“While our accomplishments are many, all of them pale in front of one, our ability to attract talent and create leaders. We have a formidable leadership factory. I have never seen so many talented, competent, and diverse group of professionals in one place,” Alhuwalia wrote. “The team is always thinking of ways to get it done, constantly innovating to improve delivery at a lower cost. I hope to stay in touch with you all, thank you again for everything.”

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