Two federal IT nonprofits are merging. The Government IT Executive Council (GITEC) and the Advanced Technology Academic Research Center (ATARC) are joining forces.

Federal News Radio has learned ATARC will take over running GITEC’s major spring conference. Meanwhile, GITEC’s board of advisers will provide insight and help for ATARC’s research priorities.

“We are taking lot of the organizational stuff off the government’s plate to let them focus on improving challenges of government through the combined organization. They will not have to worry about all the overhead that comes with running an association anymore,” said Tom Suder, ATARC’s founder and president, in an interview. “The two organizations’ values and missions are similar and our culture is a complete match. It just makes sense for us to come together.”

The merger is effective immediately.

GITEC has been around for 29 years and is run by a board of federal executives, including Adrian Burton, the chief information officer of the Health Resources and Services Administration in the Department of Health and Human Services, and Rolando Estrada, a business operations manager section chief for innovation and advanced technology development for the Military Health System and Defense Health Agency. The organization also includes an executive advisory committee of industry executives.

“We are excited about this new relationship,” said Burton in a release. “Both organizations bring unique opportunities to the federal audience. We both have something to offer, and together our constituents win.”

ATARC relies on industry and federal executive input mainly through its relationships with federally funded research and development centers (FFRDC) such as the MITRE Corporation, MIT Lincoln Labs and Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute.

Suder said the benefits to both organizations are clear. ATARC has been considering a bigger conference to bring government and industry together, while GITEC has wanted to have a more frequent voice in the federal sector.

The merged organizations will continue to use the name GITEC Summit for the big spring event, and ATARC will continue to brand its federal summits around cloud, big data, cybersecurity and other technology topics as they do today. (Full disclosure: Federal News Radio is a media partner with both GITEC and ATARC).

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