GSA taps seven federal tech experts for new FedRAMP advisory group

Officials from the General Services Administration, the Department of Homeland Security, the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services and other agencies will serve as inaugural members in a new advisory group to the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program. 

The Technical Advisory Group, part of a broader effort to engage stakeholders and support FedRAMP processes related to delivering emerging technology solutions to assist agencies, will inform decision-making on the technical, strategic and operational direction of the government-wide compliance program, according to a GSA press release. 

“This group will help make FedRAMP a smarter and more technology-forward operation that better meets its goals of making it safe and easy for federal agencies to take full advantage of cloud services,” Eric Mill, GSA’s executive director for cloud strategy in Technology Transformation Services, said in the statement. 

Members of the inaugural group are: Laura Beaufort, technical lead with the Federal Election Commission; Paul Hirsch, technical lead with TTS; Michael Boyce, director of DHS’s AI Corps; Elizabeth Schweinsberg, senior technical adviser at CMS; Grant Dasher, architecture branch chief in the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s Office of the Technical Director; Nicole Thompson, cybersecurity engineer with the Department of Defense’s Defense Digital Service; and Brian Turnau, cloud authorization program manager with GSA’s Office of the Chief Information Officer.

Laura Gerhardt, director of technology modernization and data in the Office of Management and Budget, said in a statement that “the TAG is well-positioned to provide valuable insights into streamlining processes, enhancing security postures and adapting to novel technology implementations so that agencies can leverage the full potential of FedRAMP.” 

GSA released a new roadmap for modernization efforts through the FedRAMP program in March and has since revealed a slew of other FedRAMP-related announcements.