DoD CIO Teri Takai to step down in May

Teri Takai, the Defense Department’s chief information officer, will step down this week from her post after serving as DoD’s top information technology policy official for the past 3-1/2 years.

Takai made the announcement in a Monday morning memo to the governmentwide Chief Information Officers’ Council, a source told Federal News Radio. Damien Pickart, a Pentagon spokesman, confirmed to Federal News Radio that her resignation will become effective on May 3.

Takai assumed her current role in November 2010 after the Pentagon recruited her from California, where she had been serving as that state’s CIO. She held the same job for the state of Michigan prior to that.

Her announcement comes just one month after the number two official in the DoD CIO’s office, Rob Carey, decided to retire after a 31-year federal career.

His last day was March 28, and the Falls Church, Va.-based IT firm CSC announced on Monday that it had hired him to lead its public sector cybersecurity business.

The Pentagon has not yet named an official replacement for either Takai or Carey. If it doesn’t do so by the end of the week, final decision-making authority within the DoD CIO’s office would fall, on at least an interim basis, to Dave DeVries, one of Takai’s four deputies, until a new CIO or principal deputy CIO is named.

DeVries currently serves as the deputy CIO for information enterprise and has taken a leading role in implementing what is known as the Joint Information Environment.

During her tenure at DoD, Takai has overseen a significant consolidation of IT policymaking influence under the aegis of both her office and the CIOs of the military services as the Pentagon has struggled to move from stovepiped IT systems to a common set of enterprise services under JIE.

The military announced the implementation of the first set of capabilities under JIE in Europe last year. It is currently evaluating the Pacific theater for the next round of IT consolidation.

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