Breaking news on Monday: NASA is getting a new deputy chief information officer. Sources say Renee Wynn is moving to the space agency after spending the last four years as the Environmental Protection Agency’s deputy CIO and sometime acting CIO. She replaces Gary Cox, who retired in March.

Wynn, who also has been acting assistant administrator in EPA’s Office of Environmental Information since July 2013 because the Senate refuses to confirm Ann Dunkin, has been with the EPA for 24 years working in both mission and administrative functions.

Along with NASA, the Agriculture Department and the Homeland Security Department are brought on new senior IT executives.

At USDA, Jonathon Alboum returns to the agency to take over as CIO for Cheryl Cook, who retired in March.

Joyce Hunter had been serving as acting CIO since Cook left and will return to her previous role as deputy CIO for policy and planning.

Alboum, who started his new job June 29, worked at the General Services Administration for three years in a variety of senior IT positions before coming back to Agriculture.

He also served as the CIO for USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service for two years and deputy CIO for two-and-a-half years. As the CIO, he played a key role in the Apps for Healthy Kids program.

Before joining the government, Alboum worked as a management consultant for PricewaterhouseCoopers and as director of government services at Ventera Corporation.

At DHS, CIO Luke McCormack announced a promotion for Margie Graves and the hiring of a new chief technology officer.

Graves’ promotion to principal deputy CIO for strategy, governance and transformation means she takes over the several major initiatives including service broker and catalog management, vendor management, business management operations, solution design and engineering, information sharing and cybersecurity.

“We will place increased emphasis on strengthening strategy, planning, and governance processes through the implementation of Unity of Effort and Federal IT Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA),” wrote McCormack in a blog post on CIO.gov. “We will introduce subject matter expertise early in the conceptual planning of programs to ensure that we ‘get it right.’ We must ensure that programs and selected investments are aligned with the DHS IT strategy and the Homeland Security Enterprise Architecture. With this focus, we guard against future program delivery risks and issues.”

McCormack said DHS will hire a new deputy CIO, who will oversee IT operations and service delivery, which includes enterprise operations, planning, service management and continuous service improvement.

“In the procurement and delivery of services we anticipate increased competition, flexibility, and reliability, decreased time-to-market and cost, and – above all – strengthened and state-of-the-art cyber security, our ultimate goal and mission,” McCormack wrote.

In addition to Graves, McCormack named Michael Hermus as the CTO.

This is Hermus’s first job in the federal government. He previously served as chief product and technology officer at House Party Inc., a social marketing platform, as well as CTO at FirstCarbon Solutions, Enverity Corp. and Market XT.

McCormack said Hermus “will promote the effective and efficient design and operation of all information systems for DHS through innovative technologies that support strategic planning and IT initiatives.”

Finally, Bradley Saull joined the Professional Services Council after spending the last two years working for the House Homeland Security Committee.

Saull will start July 6 as PSC’s new vice president for civilian agencies, where he will lead the civilian agencies council, which is how PSC works with departments on a variety of policy and acquisition issues.

Saull has spent time both in industry and government. He was consultant with Deloitte and worked at the Justice Department and DHS before joining the committee in 2013.

This article is part of Federal News Radio’s weekly Inside the Reporter’s Notebook feature. Read more from this week’s Notebook.

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