Senate confirms DelBene as VA chief information officer
The Senate last week confirmed former Microsoft executive Kurt DelBene as chief information officer and assistant secretary for information and technology at the Department of Veterans Affairs.
He was nominated last month for the role by President Biden, after retiring from the private sector in September, where most recently he was executive vice president of corporate strategy, core services and operations at Microsoft.
DelBene was confirmed Dec. 16 by a voice vote.
Earlier in his career, DelBene worked in the Obama administration for a brief time, during which he led improvement work on Healthcare.gov as a senior adviser to the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. While working on Healthcare.gov, he helped to troubleshoot issues encountered during the first open enrollment period.
Other previous roles include a spell at McKinsey and Company, where he focused on business strategy for technology companies. Before that, he also worked as a software developer and systems engineer for AT&T Bell Laboratories.
When DelBene left Microsoft to work on Healthcare.gov, Bill Gates in a blog post described him as “a talented and capable executive.”
He is the first permanent CIO of the VA during the Biden administration. Jim Gfrerer vacated the position at the end of the Trump administration after serving in it for two years. Since then, the role has been filled in an acting capacity by Dominic Cussatt and, more recently, Neil Evans.
