Defense

Pentagon’s Essye Miller retiring — IC CIO John Sherman will replace her

Miller, who has served as deputy CIO of the Pentagon since 2017, will be replaced by John Sherman, CIO of the intelligence community.

By Billy Mitchell

April 20, 2020

Essye Miller, Director at Defense Information Management, speaks during the Breaking the Gender Barrier panel at the Air Space, Cyber Conference in National Harbor, Md., Sept. 19, 2017. (U.S. Air Force photo/Staff Sgt. Chad Trujillo)

Essye Miller will retire as principal deputy CIO of the Department of Defense at the end of June.

Miller, who has served in the role since 2017, will be replaced by John Sherman, the CIO of the intelligence community.

“Essye has been a trusted advisor to me, especially as I came onboard the DoD,” CIO Dana Deasy said in a statement. “Essye is without a doubt an inspiration to many and her dedication to the mission and leadership style will be missed throughout the department.”

Sherman’s transfer to the DOD comes after he and Deasy have built a close working relationship in recent years. Sherman also will have experience to offer in leading a community of agencies with highly sensitive and classified information using commercial cloud capabilities, given the IC’s large lead in this area with the development of the IC IT Enterprise (ICITE) and the Commercial Cloud Solutions (C2S) contract. This is something the Pentagon is also embarking on with its Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) cloud contract.

“John will bring a breadth of experience to the organization and I look forward to working with him as we continue to implement the digital modernization strategy across the DoD,” Deasy said.

Sherman has served as IC CIO since September 2017.

“It’s been an honor to work at ODNI and lead the efforts to modernize the IC information technology environment,” he said in a statement. “All of our progress is a testament to the unified effort and teamwork of the CIOs across the community. Together with the IC CIO team we have set a strong foundation for the future.”

Sherman leaves the IC as it is embarking on two major cloud-based acquisitions: NSA’s Hybrid Compute Initiative and the multi-billion Commercial Cloud Enterprise. Sherman recently spoke to FedScoop about the two acquisitions.