Rob Carey, the Defense Department’s principal deputy chief information officer, is the latest long-time federal official who has decided to head to the private sector.

Carey announced Wednesday he will retire from DoD after 31 years of government service on March 28.

“It’s time,” Carey said in an email to friends and colleagues and obtained by Federal News Radio. “It has been a privilege and honor to serve you, the department and the nation as I have. While my civilian career was interrupted twice by mobilizations, once for Operation Desert Shield/Storm and then a few years ago by Operation Iraqi Freedom, I considered it an honor to be able to wear the cloth of the nation during a time of crisis.”

Carey doesn’t have a new job yet, but said he plans to stay focused on improving national security from another perspective.

Carey becomes at least the seventh long-time federal technology official to decide to leave government in the past six months. Along with Carey, Casey Coleman, the General Services Administration’s former CIO, moved to the private sector in January. Simon Szykman, the Commerce Department CIO, is leaving for the private sector later this year. Horace Blackman, the Veterans Affairs regional CIO and director of IT support services, joined Lockheed Martin this week after six years in government.

And the list goes on.

But the loss of Carey will be felt much deeper across the federal community. He picked up the mantle from those before him, such as Dave Wennergren, to create a strong relationship with the civilian side of the government. He knows and understands DoD’s culture and can help translate it into governmentwide programs.

Carey is the co-chairman of the CIO Council’s Information Security and Identity Management Committee (ISIMC) where he played a key role in developing and pushing for the governmentwide implementation of the Federal Identity Credentialing and Access Management (FICAM) framework, which is now the basis for initiatives such as the Federal Cloud Credential Exchange and addressing the insider threat challenges.

At DoD, Carey focused mainly on cybersecurity and improving efficiency of the Pentagon’s IT environment through the use of cloud computing, data center consolidation and the recent 10-point IT modernization plan.

Carey became the principal deputy CIO of DoD in October 2010 after spending three years as the Navy CIO.

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