Treasury CIO East to retire in June

Technology

Treasury CIO East to retire in June

Robyn East confirms she will leave after three years on the job.

Jason Miller@jmillerWFED

May 14, 2014 4:54 pm

2 min read

Add the Treasury Department’s chief information officer to what seems to be the ever growing list of departures.

Robyn East confirmed she is leaving the government in mid-June after three years of service.

“I really do think I’m retiring, but we’ll see what interesting opportunities arise,” East said in an email to Federal News Radio. “I already have a house outside of Jackson, Miss., I bought with retirement in mind some time ago, and have lots of family and friends down here. My fourth grandchild will be born in July, interestingly back up in the DC area (three others in Texas), so that will occupy my attention for a while.”

East said Mike Parker will act as CIO and will assist with the search for a new, permanent one, but is not interested in the permanent position

FedScoop first reported East’s decision to leave government.

East becomes the latest in a long line of CIOs to leave government or switch jobs. Along with Treasury, the Defense Department saw its top two CIOs leave in the past month as well as the departments of Interior, Commerce, Navy, Agency for International Development, Homeland Security Department’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement and several others have left their roles or plan to in the coming weeks.

The reasons for the departures or job changes have a similar theme — after more than three years and in some cases seven years, it was time for a change.

In East’s case, the rationale is similar. She commuted from North Carolina where she was the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill’s CIO before coming to Treasury.

During her tenure, East made a lot of progress to move Treasury into a more modern and efficient IT infrastructure. She was a big proponent of shared services. In what likely will be her final interview as CIO, East said Treasury launched an enterprise content management (ECM) system after years of push back from the bureaus. The ECM is opening the door for other shared services, including federated identity management and others.

East said strategic sourcing for commodity IT also has been a priority to improve how Treasury manages and gets more from its $3 billion IT budget.

Treasury names Robyn East as new CIO