OPM recruits DOD’s DeVries as new CIO

The Office of Personnel Management has hired Dave DeVries as its permanent CIO.

DeVries joins OPM from the Defense Department, where he’s spent the last 35 years of his career and most recently served as its principal deputy CIO.

OPM has been without a permanent CIO since February, when Donna Seymour stepped down from the position and retired from government amid the fallout of the massive breach of agency systems announced the summer before that compromised the information of more than 21 million people. Lisa Schlosser, deputy federal CIO at OMB and deputy administrator of the Office of E-Government, has filled the position in the interim since March.

During his decades-long career at the Pentagon, DeVries has played major roles in driving the department’s cybersecurity initiatives and leading its IT to a single, departmentwide architecture, similar to OPM’s massive “shell” overhaul its been undertaking in recent years.

“I’m elated that David has decided to join our team here at OPM,” Beth Cobert, acting director of OPM, said in a released statement. “David has decades worth of the technical and management experience necessary to hit the ground running as we continue our technology transformation efforts, and work with our partners at DoD to stand up the National Background Investigations Bureau (NBIB).”

DeVries’ will play a major role in coordinating with his former employer, DOD, to launch NBIB, OPM stressed in a release announcing his hire. “DeVries will be at the forefront of this transition, and will lead continued implementation of OPM’s overall IT infrastructure and cybersecurity improvement plan,” it says.

Likewise, DOD CIO Terry Halvorsen, who DeVries worked under, looks forward to continuing working together as cross-agency colleagues.

“Dave will be missed by DoD, but DoD isn’t losing his expertise,” Halvorsen said in a statement. “As DoD and OPM continue to improve current IT systems and begin the development of the new IT services and environment to support the NBIB, he will play a key leadership role, ensuring integration between OPM and DoD.”

In the aftermath of the breaches, OPM faces dire circumstances to accelerate its modernization work. Lawmakers on Capitol Hill recognized this, granting OPM its full $37 million budget request for IT and cybersecurity upgrades in fiscal year 2017.

DeVries will be in a rare position as the CIO of an agency with this type of funding dedicated to IT modernization, and his former boss hopes he’ll share what he learns from it.

“Dave will have the ability to bring expertise from DoD into OPM, and ensure that DoD understands how lessons learned from the new IT can be applied within DoD and the other Federal agencies,” Halvorsen said. “This will be a win that improves IT information sharing across all federal Departments and agencies.”

DeVries will start at OPM “in the coming weeks,” the release said.