DOJ elevates deputy CIO to top IT role

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Nikki Collier had been serving as the acting CIO since Melinda Rogers left the role last year, according to the CIO Council’s website.

The Department of Justice has a new permanent chief information officer after the agency’s long-serving IT lead departed in the middle of last year. 

Justice’s leadership page for its Office of the Chief Information Officer now lists Nikki Collier as the Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Information Resources Management and CIO. Collier has served as DOJ’s deputy CIO since January 2025, and was chief of staff to the Assistant Attorney General of Administration from October 2022 through February 2025.

The agency has been without a permanent CIO since Melinda Rogers left the role at the end of May 2025. Rogers first joined DOJ in 2010 and served as the agency’s deputy CIO and chief information security officer before being named CIO in September 2020. She also oversaw the development and release of DOJ’s IT strategic plan for fiscal years 2025-2027

According to cached versions of the CIO Council’s website, Collier was listed as DOJ’s acting CIO after Rogers departed the agency. 

The agency did not immediately respond to a request for comment about when Collier assumed her new role, although her staff profile on the agency’s website — which now includes her new title — was last updated on Feb. 23. Collier’s LinkedIn page also lists her as having assumed the CIO role this month. 

Collier has broad federal tech leadership experience, having previously served as CIO of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Office of Marine and Aviation Operations, as well as the acting deputy director of service delivery staff within DOJ’s CIO office during a previous stint with the agency.

Collier’s DOJ staff profile also notes that she was the agency’s project lead for its move to Microsoft 365, where she “managed various contracts totaling $23 million and oversaw the migration of 120,000 email accounts to the cloud to consolidate 23 disparate email systems.” 

In addition to her federal technology roles, Collier served for 22 years in the U.S. Army, retiring in 2015 at the rank of sergeant major.