FEMA Taps Goddard's Gardner As CIO

Top 10 Government IT Innovators Of 2013

Adrian Gardner will become the new chief information officer at FEMA, industry sources have told Federal News Radio. Gardner has served as CIO of NASA Goddard Space Center since 2010.

Gardner notified his staff at Goddard that he was moving on to FEMA, according to Federal News Radio. FEMA could not be reached for comment to confirm the appointment. Gardner would replace Jeanne Etzel, who left FEMA in March earlier this year to work in the office of the CIO at the Department of Homeland Security.

Gardner joined Goddard in early February 2010, also taking on the role of director of the information technology and communications directorate. Prior to that, he served as CIO of the National Weather Service since January 2007.

[ Agencies report improvement in automated information exchange. Read more at Information Sharing: Feds Cite Progress. ]

Gardner has also worked for the Department of Energy as the deputy CIO for cyber security, and the deputy CIO for IT reform.

At Goddard, Gardner has led initiatives in cloud computing, high-performance computing and government transparency. One of his highest-profile projects was the deployment of cloud computing in a portable container.

InformationWeek named Gardner one of government's most influential public sector tech executives in 2013. Government CIO 25 recognizes leading CIOs in federal, state and local government who share qualities such as technology vision, clout among peers in other agencies and an ability to show concrete results.