Comings and goings in Defense leadership

DoD Reporter's Notebook

We like to call attention to significant departures or additions to government service in this space. There were several of them over the past week

Jared Serbu@jserbuWFED

January 11, 2016 4:46 am

1 min read

We like to call attention to significant departures or additions to government service in this space. There were several of them over the past week:

Dave Bowen, the chief information officer at the Defense Health Agency, marked the New Year by retiring from government service. He was in on the ground floor of DoD’s newest combat support agency and tackled one of the hardest tasks a government CIO can take on: cobbling together a new organization from the IT functions of several different organizations. Before becoming DHA’s first-ever CIO, Bowen led IT operations for its predecessor organization, the Military Health System. Prior to coming to DoD a decade ago, he served as the Federal Aviation Administration’s CIO.

Rob Nabors, the chief of staff at the Department of Veterans Affairs, is leaving government as well. He’s accepted a new job at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, where he’ll serve as director of governmental and policy affairs. Nabors has worked on Capitol Hill and at the Office of Management and Budget in several positions dating back to the Clinton administration. More recently, he was the deputy OMB director for budget, and led the White House’s supervision of the VA patient wait time scandal before he became the right-hand man to new VA Secretary Robert McDonald in April.

Stan Sims, the director of the Defense Security Service, departed his post in a retirement ceremony at the agency’s headquarters in Quantico, Virginia, last Thursday. Sims is a retired Army colonel who previously served as the director for security within the office of the undersecretary of Defense for intelligence. DoD has not named a successor, and for now, Jim Kren, DSS’ deputy director, will lead the agency as its acting director.