Tony Montemarano, top DISA official, retiring after nearly 50 years

Tony Montemarano, one of the longest-serving leaders in the federal information technology community, is set to retire in the coming weeks, Federal News Network has learned.

Montemarano, who is currently the top civilian official at the Defense Information Systems Agency, will leave after nearly 50 years of government service — the first 21 as a naval aviator, and the remainder at DISA, the agency he joined as a civilian employee in 1992.

A virtual retirement ceremony is scheduled for Dec. 11, according to an invitation the agency sent to members of the federal IT community. A DISA spokesman confirmed Montemarano’s impending departure, but declined to say who will replace him, since no announcement has yet been made to the DISA workforce.

Montemarano climbed the ranks at DISA over the course of 28 years before he took his current position, the agency’s executive deputy director. After having served for several years in the Navy’s acquisition community dealing with communications procurements, he retired and transitioned to a civilian job in the DISA office that then handled the Defense Information Systems Network — DoD’s global backbone for voice and data communications.

He took his current job in 2015 as part of an agency-wide reorganization. Prior to that, he had served as DISA’s top acquisition executive, its director for strategic planning and information, and as a program executive officer and program director for several of the agency’s major initiatives, including a major effort to expand the bandwidth of military networks in the early 2000s.

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