The Department of Veterans Affairs has in the last few months brought on three new senior IT executives, including a deputy chief information officer for a newly created Office of Customer Advocacy.
In an email to VA employees, obtained by FedScoop, VA Chief Information Officer Stephen Warren welcomed Jacquelyn Patillo as deputy CIO for the Office of Customer Advocacy, an office recently established to coordinate access to the Office of Information Technology. Patillo served previously as both the corporate customer advocate and the executive director for field operations for the service delivery and engineering division — one of the seven major departments within the OIT.
Susan McHugh-Polley joined VA as the new executive director for field operations for SDE, which directs all operational and maintenance activities associated with VA’s IT environment. McHugh-Polley most recently served as the director of the operations division for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement at the Department of Homeland Security.
“Within [that] role, she was responsible for supporting the Office of the Chief Information Officer, for which she managed the operations and maintenance of the DHS ICE IT infrastructure,” Warren said. “Mrs. McHugh-Polley brings a wide variety of IT expertise with her and has 30 years of experience in areas such as asset management and IT field, enterprise, network and security operations.”
VA’s OIT office also recently hired Dale Ferraro to serve as the new corporate customer advocate. Ferraro joined VA from the Labor Department, where he served as the chief of production coordination. He has “more than 25 years of IT experience in the public and private sector ranging from service desk, IT management, customer advocacy [and] tier-2 support to data center operations,” Warren said. “Mr. Ferraro is also a retired Air Force veteran and is excited about working at the VA where he can provide service and support to his fellow comrades.”
A VA spokesperson confirmed the additions in an email to FedScoop.
