USDA’s Washington shifts to new kind of ‘CIO’ role

Change in the agency chief information officer ranks isn’t unusual. There’s a common refrain most of you have heard that most CIOs only last, on average, two years.

While that perception comes from a six-year-old Government Accountability Office report, the reality is many agency CIOs last much longer. But it’s a rarity that one stays in the role and does so as successfully as Gary Washington has over the last almost eight years.

So the fact that Washington, one of the longest serving agency chief information officers in government, is moving to a new role at the Agriculture Department is worth taking a second to recognize.

USDA named Sam Berry, who joined in May as a senior advisor on government efficiency in the Office of the CIO, as its new CIO on Friday. With Berry taking over the lead technology role, USDA has converted the CIO’s role to a political one.

“Originally from Michigan, Sam has built a reputation as a visionary leader in the tech space. We are excited for his perspectives and entrepreneurial energy he brings to the role, and confident his leadership will help drive our technology strategy into the next chapter,” wrote Secretary Brooke Rollins in an email to staff, obtained by Federal News Network. “Sam brings a strong track record of driving digital transformation and technology excellence, with long-standing hands-on experience in both startup and enterprise environments. As founder and CEO of software companies, Sam led the automation of complex business processes, consolidated enterprise platforms, and priorities running infrastructure securely and efficiently in the cloud. His work as a founding engineer of several innovative service offerings demonstrates a sharp eye for building solutions from the ground up that deliver real world impact.”

Washington, who joined USDA in February 2018, will transition to this new chief innovation officer role, though Rollins didn’t offer any insight into what he will do. The longest serving agency CIO today is probably Dave Shive at GSA. In fact, there has been a high rate of turnover across the CIO community this year, with 23 out of 27 CFO Act agencies changing executives in the last nine months.

“With decades of service in both government and military sectors, followed by an impactful tenure within USDA, Gary has been instrumental in shaping the technological foundation USDA relies on today,” Rolins wrote. “We offer our deepest gratitude to Gary for his dedication, expertise and visionary leadership over the years. This new role is a natural progression and will allow him to focus on advancing USDA strategic innovation initiatives that align with serving our customers and the American people. These changes reflect our belief that technology and innovation are cornerstones for our future success. With Sam guiding our information systems and Gary spearheading innovation, we are more aligned than ever with our mission to serve American farmers, ranchers, and the agriculture community.”

Washington always out in front

As the USDA CIO, Washington accomplished more for USDA than nearly any other of the agency’s  technology leaders in the last 20 years. He led the effort to win five awards from the Technology Modernization Fund, including a $64 million investment to consolidate and modernize 17 disparate networks. At least two other attempts to consolidate networks across USDA failed, making Washington’s decision to use the carrot and stick of the oversight of the TMF board a major key to the agency’s success.

Washington, who came to USDA from the Office of Management and Budget’s Federal CIO team, understood how to use the resources available across government. USDA was one of the first agencies to win a TMF award, to bring in the Centers of Excellence experts from the General Services Administration, and to move applications to cloud services. He also pushed for the use of low-code/no-code platforms and leaned into using application programming interfaces to help agency software developers modernize applications more quickly.

Washington said in 2023 that he wants USDA to rely mostly on software-as-a-service, awarding cloud contracts through its Stratus vehicle. USDA launched the basic ordering agreement contract vehicle with last November and is expanding it this year with more vendors.

In the 2023 omnibus spending bill, lawmakers recognized the importance and impact of Washington and his Office of the CIO. Legislators added a provision requiring the agency’s CIO to approve any new or significant upgrades to IT systems.

“[N]one of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this act may be transferred to the Office of the Chief Information Officer without written notification to and the prior approval of the committees on appropriations of both houses of Congress,” the bill stated. “[N]one of the funds available to the Department of Agriculture for information technology shall be obligated for projects, contracts or other agreements over $25,000 prior to receipt of written approval by the chief information officer; Provided further, that the CIO may authorize an agency to obligate funds without written approval from the CIO for projects, contracts or other agreements up to $250,000 based upon the performance of an agency measured against the performance plan requirements.”

Washington’s IT modernization and management efforts were recognized outside of USDA as well. He was a finalist for the Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Medal Management Excellence finalist in 2021 and a Presidential Rank Award for Meritorious Service honoree in 2024.

Role of CINO varies

As Washington transitions into his new role, the question comes up: What does a CINO exactly do?

While it’s not exactly a new position, it’s one that isn’t as well defined as a CIO. Other agencies have had CINOs before, including the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation in 2022 and the Defense Department in 2016. But typically, folks in these positions didn’t last long. The FDIC CINO lasted just over a year. The Pentagon decided to name a CINO only to put the position on hold less than nine months after that initial decision, and never came back to it.

Over the years, several other agencies have also established chief innovation officers, including the departments of Health and Human Services, Transportation and Energy as well as the  the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Currently, Leadership Connect says there are 17 people or positions with the CINO or deputy CINO title across government, including executives at the departments of Labor and Commerce, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

A 2019 report from the Institute for Defense Analysis detailed what the role of a chief innovation officer could look like.

“The role of a CINO is inherently flexible with sometimes purposefully ambiguous boundaries. To use a football metaphor, CINOs can be a bit like a ‘free safety’ position, with their portfolios defined around an agency’s priority needs,” the report stated. “The primary role of a CINO is not to innovate, but to provide recognition and support (e.g., time, funding, training, and management support) for federal employees to identify and implement innovative ideas. Despite their working in federal agencies with different operating contexts, government CINOs have similar understandings of their role.”

Elisa Farri, a vice president and the co-lead of Capgemini Invent’s Management Lab, wrote in a 2022 white paper that in their review of Fortune 500 companies the role of chief innovation officers varied widely.

“Unlike more established C-suite roles, whose job specs are relatively standardized, the chief innovation officer’s role varies significantly depending on the organization, business context and the individual themselves,” the researchers found. “The role is divided into two main categories: managing the innovation funnel (e.g., identifying new market spaces, funding and supporting early-stage initiatives, and managing the experiment portfolio) and building innovation capabilities (e.g., developing internal skillsets and disseminating best practices).”

Most recently, the IT and Innovation Foundation recommended the Trump administration establish a federal CINO. This person would coordinate and drive innovation within the federal enterprise.

“The CINO would complement the chief technology officer (CTO), whose role should be focused on supporting technological innovation in the broader society and economy, and the federal chief information officer (CIO), whose job is to focus on the federal IT enterprise,” ITIF wrote in February.

It seems like Washington will have a broad canvas to drive innovation through USDA. But it also will be worth watching how Washington settles into his new role, or if this is just a weigh station for his next adventure.

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