Defense

Zeleke departs deputy DoD CIO role, reasons unclear

Lily Zeleke served since 2022 as the deputy DoD chief information officer for information enterprise. Bill Dunlap, a former DARPA CIO, will fill the role on an ...

Jared Serbu@jserbuWFED

February 23, 2024 4:46 pm

< a min read

The Pentagon official who oversaw DoD’s cloud computing and enterprise IT portfolio for just over the past year is no longer in her role, Defense officials confirmed Friday.

Lily Zeleke, who became the deputy DoD chief information officer for information enterprise in 2022, “took over new responsibilities” in the DoD CIO’s office on Thursday, Cmdr. Tim Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman told Federal News Network via email. He did not specify what those new responsibilities are.

Bill Dunlap, who had served under Zeleke as the information enterprise office’s principal director, is now the acting deputy CIO for information enterprise, Gorman said. Dunlap previously served as CIO at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Zeleke herself held that same acting title for most of 2022 before formally taking the deputy CIO role last December. During that time, she oversaw the relatively trouble-free awards of the Defense Department’s first ever enterprise-wide cloud computing contracts, the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability to Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Oracle.

The reasons for her departure from the deputy CIO position remain unclear. Zeleke did not immediately respond to questions sent via LinkedIn on Friday.