President Trump has announced his intent to appoint Suzette Kent as federal chief information officer, a role that has been vacant throughout the first year of the current administration.
“Ms. Kent is an industry leader of large-scale business transformation using technology for the world’s most complex organizations,” the Jan. 26 announcement said.
“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’s work history consists of mainly financial institutions: she is currently a principal at Ernst & Young and has been a partner at Accenture, president of global payments consulting at Carreker Corporation and managing director at JPMorgan.
According to Kent’s LinkedIn profile, she has never served in a CIO position until this appointment, which would place her in charge of governmentwide IT policy management, including cybersecurity.
The CIO position was previously held by Tony Scott, who was appointed by President Obama in 2015 and left with the change in administration. Kent takes over from acting federal CIO Margie Graves, who holds the deputy federal CIO position.
Jessie Bur covers federal IT and management.
