Suzette Kent New Federal CIO

The federal government finally has a new permanent CIO. 

On Jan. 26, president Donald Trump officially announced that he had appointed Suzette Kent as the next administrator of the Office of Electronic Government in the Office of Management and Budget, the official title of the federal CIO. The position has been vacant since Jan. 17, 2017, when Tony Scott left the role. Margie Graves, formerly deputy CIO of the Homeland Security Department, has been serving as acting CIO since then. 

As federal CIO, Kent will set IT policies for agencies and will also lead the Federal CIO Council.

Kent is currently serving as the principal of Ernst & Young's financial services office. She has also been a partner at Accenture, consulting president at Carreker Corporation and a managing director at JPMorgan Chase.

The White House says in a statement:

Although technology change has been at the core of her professional career, retooling the workforce and creating new opportunities for people has been an essential element of efforts that she has led. She has served as an enterprise leader for organizational learning, diversity and inclusiveness, and career development at every organization in which she has worked. Suzette is a frequent speaker in global industry forums, publisher of thought leadership pieces and holds patents in banking processes.

Kent will have a lot on her plate. The White House is promoting a new "Centers of Excellence" model to get agencies to update their IT systems and has also issued a report with detailed recommendations for IT modernization. The White House report contains 50 action items, FedScoop notes, and, as FCW details, it contains 31 deadlines between now and January 2019 for various agencies to take action to implement its recommendations.