New leadership for GSA digital IT shop

The General Services Administration has promoted one of its own to help lead its citizen-focused innovation shop.

Garren Givens has been named acting deputy associate administrator of the Office of Citizen Services and Innovative Technologies, a team focused on providing data, innovative technologies and modern services to the American taxpayer and other government agencies.

(GSA/18F)

Currently the leader of the Presidential Innovation Fellowship program — and a former PIF himself within the Department of Education — Givens will take over the role later this month. He also serves as deputy executive director of GSA’s 18F digital services team.

Phaedra Chrousos, associate administrator for OCSIT and 18F, sent an email to GSA staff Wednesday announcing her decision to name Givens acting deputy associate administrator, a position Kathy Conrad has held in an official capacity since 2011 until she steps down later this month.

“Garren has a track record of providing vision, leadership and a fertile environment for teams working on some of the most pressing challenges across our government,” she wrote. “He has also been instrumental in institutionalizing both the PIF program as well as 18F through improved processes, technology, and recruiting. Garren will maintain his current responsibilities in addition to this new one, with an eye toward increasing collaboration and sharing best practices across the OCSIT/18F organization.”

In his new role, Givens will be responsible to “further OCSIT’s important mandate of providing agencies the shared services and solutions they need to move forward in key areas of the Presidential Management Agenda, including customer experience, open government/data, secure cloud and smarter IT delivery,” Chrousos said.

Givens will begin in his new role July 26.