Trump nominates former Transportation CIO Ryan Cote to lead IT at VA

President Donald Trump submitted a nomination Tuesday for Ryan Cote to serve as assistant secretary of information and technology and CIO of the Department of Veterans Affairs.

If confirmed by Senate vote, it would be Cote’s second run as a CIO under Trump. He served in the IT chief role at the Department of Transportation during the first Trump administration.

Cote started his career as a U.S. Marine but went on to hold jobs in technology at firms like HP, Northrop Grumman, Gartner and IBM, before he entered federal service in 2019 at Transportation.

Since leaving government at the end of Trump’s first term, Cote has served as a board adviser for a company called Nubeva and as a so-called “private” global CIO, according to his LinkedIn profile.

The VA has been without a Senate-confirmed CIO since the Trump administration took office. Kurt DelBene held the role during the previous administration. Eddie Pool, the agency’s deputy CIO for connectivity and collaboration services, has been serving as the acting CIO.

The VA CIO role is the only one, apart from the Department of Defense, in the federal government that requires Senate approval. The position manages a budget of more than $7 billion and an organization of some 16,000 federal employees and contractors.

Back during his days at Transportation CIO, Cote was critical of the hype around artificial intelligence, particularly in its application for cybersecurity. He said during an event in September 2019: “I would say the marketing hype is at a 10, and delivery is at a 1. I think we’re in the early, early stages of applying real AI to cyber. We’re still trying to figure out the definition of AI in some circles and what is AI and what isn’t AI.”