Small Business Administration has a new CIO

Marcus Alzona is no longer the chief information officer of the Small Business Administration.

It’s not completely clear what happened to the role. A person familiar with the situation said the Trump administration technology executive was let go last week and an employee within the agency told FedScoop that they learned the old CIO had been let go and that a new acting CIO had been appointed. But the Small Business Administration did not respond to a request for comment about the circumstances of Alzona’s departure. 

Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, who chairs the Senate Small Business Committee and wrote to the White House in January about IT issues and the importance of having a strong chief information officer at the agency, said in a statement to FedScoop that she is “glad [SBA] Administrator [Kelly] Loeffler is getting the best people in place to make SBA work more efficiently and effectively for small business owners.” 

Alzona, who has extensive experience with Republican politics in Maryland and assisted with the Trump inauguration, according to his LinkedIn profile, was selected for the SBA position at a time when the Trump administration has pushed to reclassify the CIO position, potentially making it more political.

Douglas Robertson, SBA’s deputy chief information officer, is now acting in the top tech position, according to a website managed by the Federal Chief Information Officer Council. A website on the agency’s privacy program, which was updated Friday after FedScoop reached out to SBA for comment, also lists him as the acting CIO. 

A leadership page for the SBA chief information officer did not list a person in the position as of publication. Alzona was previously listed as CIO on the SBA website but that was recently removed, FedScoop reported Thursday. As of Thursday afternoon, Alzona was also cited as a member of the Federal CIO Council, but by Friday morning, staff had removed his name from the website. 

Alzona appears to have held the SBA’s top IT role for about a month, though his LinkedIn profile still lists him in the position as of publication.

Phone calls to the SBA’s CIO office do not go through. The SBA press office didn’t respond to multiple FedScoop requests for comment about the status of the CIO position over the past several weeks. 

Billy Mitchell and Matt Bracken contributed reporting.