Guy Cavallo, the Office of Personnel Management’s chief information officer, is retiring from federal service after more than 23 years.

Cavallo’s last day is Jan. 10, Federal News Network has learned.

Cavallo, who announced his decision on LinkedIn, has been OPM’s CIO since 2020, taking over for current federal CIO Clare Martorana.

“I leave OPM as the longest serving CIO since 2010, passing over nine previous CIOs in seniority. I am so proud of the tremendous run by my team to transform the CIO organization and lead OPM’s IT modernization,” Cavallo wrote.

OPM deputy CIO Melvin Brown is expected to be named acting CIO until the agency names a permanent replacement.

Cavallo will remain in the federal sector, working for an yet-unnamed IT consulting firm, where he will be doing a mix of federal and state and local work.

During his time CIO, Cavallo made it a priority to move OPM to the cloud. He recently told Federal News Network that the agency completed a two-year sprint, replacing or migrating over 50 applications from on-premise data centers to the cloud.

“After two years, I’m very proud to say that we’re over 90% in the cloud. Our goal was to move everything that’s server based to the cloud,” Cavallo said during a recent panel discussion hosted by Federal News Network. “I also have a legacy mainframe, which the Technology Modernization Fund just announced funding to modernize that, which was my last big albatross for staying on premise. But our goal was moving all network services, cybersecurity services and application services to the cloud. My team has done an incredible job doing that, major applications that millions of people use a year, like USAJobs, which some people are looking at on a regular basis, that’s in the cloud.”

Reinvigorated OPM’s IT workforce

The move to the cloud also saved OPM money. Cavallo said by moving its network infrastructure services and cyber logging to the cloud, the agency saved or avoided spending 80% of its costs compared to the previous fiscal year.

“On the cyber front, again, our strong direction is cloud native services. If you don’t have that, then we look for a cloud application service. Last thing we will do is move anything as infrastructure-as-a-service to the cloud,” he said. “By moving all of our cyber logging to the cloud, we’re able to use AI to see the many attacks that we’re undergoing at any point.”

Additionally, Cavallo led the launch of the new Postal Health Benefits System this fall for over 1.7 million postal workers and retirees. He said the system was fully operational 100% of the time and had no unscheduled downtime through the entire Open Season.

Another big focus area for Cavallo has been reinvigorating the IT workforce through training and education as well as by hiring employees with new or more modern skillsets.

“When I got to OPM, the average age of the IT workforce was in the 50s, and not on the low end of the 50s, and I knew that’s not a sustainable model. I wanted to bring in early career talent where you don’t have to hire at a GS-15 level and that you know is fresh out of college who have been working on computers since they were two. OPM has an intern program called the Pathways Program, and I highly advise everybody take a look at that,” he said at the recent panel discussion. “I’ve brought in probably 25 or 30 interns in the last two years. I personally meet with them and tell them that if my people are having you get telling you to go get them coffee, come see me. I want them involved. I want them hands on. I knew we were being successful when the first group hit the end of their year, and a number of them came to me and said, ‘Guy, I still have school, but is there a way I can work part time for you guys while I’m back at school?’ I said, ‘Absolutely, we can do that.’ I’ve hired about 80% of them by bringing them here.”

In addition to working for OPM, Cavallo was the deputy CIO at the Small Business Administration and served as executive director of IT operations at the Transportation Security Administration.

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