Based Barbaccia.
You probably have more CIO experience than the incoming White House CIO
The US has a new federal chief information officer who, based on his resume, has no prior experience as a CIO but is now tasked with overseeing IT operations and strategy for the entire federal government. Greg Barbaccia made the announcement in a LinkedIn post last week, which was later confirmed by other outlets. Appointed …
COMMENTS
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Tuesday 28th January 2025 21:34 GMT DS999
Of all of the parade of incompetent morons
Trump has put up for big jobs, the CIO is one I'm worried about the least. People in charge of the military, DOJ, and intelligence agencies can do lasting damage. The CIO can't mess up government IT a whole lot more than has been messed up for decades.
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Saturday 1st February 2025 22:07 GMT jake
There is obsolete and then there is obsolete.
If it's still doing the job it was designed to do, and more, is it actually obsolete?
Take for example the Stanford Dish (or the Mark I telescope at Jodrell Bank[0], for you Brits).
[0] Yes, I know, it was renamed after Lovell a while back. I'm an old fart, habits die hard.
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Wednesday 29th January 2025 01:13 GMT Tron
Surely you are not doubting Glorious Leader? Tariffs if you are...
I think the rationale goes: At each decision, ask yourself, what would Donald do? And then you do it.
If it helps, people in charge never actually do any real work. Everything is done by the people below them who have experience and expertise, and so are paid less.
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Wednesday 29th January 2025 16:26 GMT Jadith
Are you implying these positions are not being filled based off merit and experience*? I say they most certainly are!! I'm afraid you may have missed the fine print though
*All mentions of merit and experience refer to the merit of the person's lips and the experience of placing them on a certain orange posterior.
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Wednesday 29th January 2025 13:13 GMT Cliffwilliams44
Tech knowledge does not equal good CIO
The CIO does not need to be the most technically proficient person. What they need to be is a good manager, be able to listen to their people, determine who's right and who's full of it, and have the guts to push back on management and department heads when they come up with asinine ideas that IT knows will be a waste of time.
In this role, you need someone who is going to be able to push back against the "immovable object" of departmental change resistance. That;s probably one of the biggest reason's the governments IT is a mess of dinosaur gear and software.
I work for someone like this, she is not technical at all and had no problem telling people that, but she will a,so tell them that her people are "top notch" and she values their knowledge. After over 30 years in IT she it the best CIO I've ever worked for,
Maybe that's why he was chosen. Experience in government should be a negative, not a positive. Career government employees are the problem!
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Tuesday 4th February 2025 16:11 GMT Anonymous Coward
CISSP respected?
Not round these parts. A few years back I seemed to be in the habit of sorting out hacked Wordpress sites.
Not sure how this guy came to me - via another customer perhaps - but anyhoo his front page now
said "har har har you has been h4x0red!" OSLT. So in the process of unborking his site, he gave
me his admin password. Which, naturally was his wife's maiden name. Which was five letters long.
And a common dictionary word. Something like "white" or "smith".
I decided that a complete reinstall was not necessary, for the benefit of commentards who are even
now reaching for the keyboard to tell me that the only safe thing to do is blow the server up and
bury it in concrete, and unborked it.
The nature of the site? Advertising his services as a "Certified Information Systems Security Professional"...
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Wednesday 5th February 2025 02:59 GMT JRStern
Sounds OK-ish to me
CIO for the White House? Just keep Trump's phone charged. Actually it looks like he delegates some of that now. Job complete.
New guy seem to have some qualifications, give me a break.
I applied for a job a few years back, what was it - "Chief Data Officer". I'd never been a CDO, but hey. Made it through a first round but not a second. Thought I'd made a good presentation. Then I looked at the outgoing guy's CV. Nothing. Nada. So I was overqualified. Not for the first time. SMH. Now I'll bet ChatGPT could write me a really great CDO resume. That's how you do it.
Or mostly be someone's buddy.