Federal 100: Karen Wrege
Name: Karen Wrege
Title: CIO, Director of Defense Trade Controls
Agency: State Department
Cloud hopper. Wrege and her team are responsible for licensing the international sale of weapons, but their technology systems were from the 1980s. She spearheaded a cloud-based modernization initiative to overhaul business processes, and all legacy systems will have been retired or consolidated by the end of the year. The effort has already resulted in cost savings of 60 percent. Thanks to Wrege’s leadership, the project “proved to State that you can have these pockets of excellence and deploy…citizen-centric delivery at a really rapid velocity while still maintaining the security posture that an organization needs,” Regent Solutions President Byron Caswell said.