Insurance and financial-services company American International Group Inc. is putting AIG Technologies Inc., its IT services subsidiary, under the control of the parent company's Office of the CIO. Mark Popolano, AIG's CIO, will retain that post as well as head up AIG Technologies.

The move comes as Lawrence English, the AIG senior VP who previously managed AIG Technologies, is retiring.

AIG Technologies provides IT infrastructure services to the insurance industry, including data-center hosting, disaster recovery, and software-development services. Popolano will oversee AIG Technologies' data centers in Livingston, N.J., and Fort Worth, Texas. Among his responsibilities will be enhancing global infrastructure, improving technology service levels, and increasing coordination of hardware and software purchases, according to AIG.

Placing AIG Technologies under the CIO's responsibility will enable AIG to maintain world-class IT capabilities, the company says.

Since becoming CIO in 2000, Popolano has worked to refine the company's IT governance model by implementing a "federal and state" model in which AIG's divisions create their own IT architectures, with the central IT organization defining global standards for the company. Popolano has also implemented an IT-portfolio-management approach in which IT projects are graded and grouped in order to achieve maximum synergies across the enterprise.