Navy Dept. deputy CIOs selected

Navy chief information officer David Wennergren said Feb. 20 that two people tentatively have been named as Navy Department deputy CIOs.

* Rear Adm. Thomas Zelibor has been selected to be the Navy Department deputy CIO for the Navy. Zelibor is the director of the Space, Information Warfare, Command and Control Division of Naval Operations.

* Brig. Gen. John Thomas has been selected to be the Navy Department deputy CIO for the Marine Corps. Thomas is the Marine Corps CIO as well as the Marines' director for command, control, communications and computers.

The memorandums making the appointments official has yet to be signed by acting Navy Secretary Hansford Johnson, but Wennergren told Federal Computer Week that he expects that will happen by week's end.

"Their duties will be to execute the information management and information technology agendas for the Department of the Navy down through the chain of command," Wennergren said while attending an AFCEA International luncheon meeting.

Wennergren's office underwent a severe downsizing late last year, as the Navy planned to reduce the 50-person staff by half. Wennergren said the restructuring has provided him the opportunity to re-evaluate different roles and determine where the office's strengths should be.

"Change comes everywhere, and you can't be the CIO without the ability to change," he said. "We've gone through a pretty aggressive restructuring and a couple things to come out will really strengthen management in the department."

Wennergren said the main jobs of Zelibor and Thomas in their new roles will be to "make sure we have an alignment of the IT vision and to make sure we're working on the same set of initiatives that allow us to implement enterprisewide solutions."