Technology

CIO shuffle continues with HUD choosing a new one

David Chow comes to HUD from the National Credit Union Administration, where he spent the last seven years.

Jason Miller@jmillerWFED

August 23, 2018 6:16 pm

2 min read

The busy week for federal IT executives continues. This time over at the Department of Housing and Urban Development where David Chow is the new chief information officer.

A HUD spokesman confirmed Chow started Monday, coming over from the National Credit Union Administration.

Chow served as a program manager at the NCUA since 2011.

He replaces Johnson Joy, who resigned suddenly in March after only nine months on the job.

Chad Cowan, the chief of staff to the deputy secretary, has been acting CIO since March.

Along with Chow, three other federal IT executives moved or announced plans to move to new roles.

Sylvia Burns announced her intention to leave as CIO of the Interior Department for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

Beth Killoran, the CIO of the Department of Health and Human Services, was transferred to a new role in the Surgeon General’s office.

Kelly Olson, the chief of staff at the General Services Administration’s Technology Transformation Service, will be the acting deputy commissioner of the Federal Acquisition Service and director of TTS.

In coming to HUD, Chow immediately is under the spotlight as the agency is one of three to receive money from the Technology Modernization Fund. HUD is using $20 million to move more quickly on its application migration effort away from mainframes.

The agency has been on the IT modernization path for some time with a focus on moving more applications to the cloud and updating desktops and laptops.

Chow also will have to decide on what to do with another major initiative — HUD Enterprise Architecture Transformation (HEAT). It’s at least three years behind schedule with an draft solicitation out in 2015, a final solicitation in February 2017 and so far at least three requests for price extensions without an award.

HUD earned a “C+” on the May 2018 Federal IT Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA) scorecard. The agency has moved 91 percent of its major IT projects to iterative or dev/ops methodology, and accurately measured the risk of all of its projects.

Chow will have to work on two other major areas of the scorecard where HUD received “Fs.” The Oversight and Government Reform Committee found it has not reviewed its major IT investments under the PortfolioStat process, and is struggling with its software inventory and management.