New federal CIO named; no major strategy changes anticipated

Incoming federal Chief Information Officer Steven VanRoekel's goal in office will be to consolidate and carry through on programs developed by his predecessor rather than to launch major new initiatives, the former Microsoft executive and Federal Communications Commission managing director said Thursday.

The White House announced VanRoekel's appointment to the government's top technology post early Thursday. He will replace the nation's first federal CIO, Vivek Kundra, who will leave office Aug. 12 to take a fellowship at Harvard University. "I think Vivek's work was really the first step in a larger reworking of government IT," VanRoekel said. "He [created] an amazing foundation on which we can build."

VanRoekel worked on most of President Obama's signature initiatives during his two-year tenure at FCC, including a plan to consolidate the agency's two data centers into one, moving the FCC.gov website to a computer cloud hosted by a private company and appointing the independent agency's first chief information security officer....