Hobbs to be new Treasury CIO

Ira Hobbs, the Agriculture Department deputy chief information officer for the past seven years, was named today as the new CIO for the Treasury Department.

Hobbs' appointment is effective June 13. He will oversee the department's $2.6 billion IT portfolio, including IRS' troubled business systems modernization.

He replaces Drew Ladner, who left Treasury April 30. Mike Parker, former Treasury deputy CIO, had been acting CIO since Ladner's departure.

Hobbs served as acting Agriculture CIO for one year until February 2002, when Scott Charbo was appointed CIO and subsequently returned to his duties as deputy CIO. As acting CIO, Hobbs oversaw 4,000 IT employees and helped manage the $1.7 billion IT program. He had been the department's deputy CIO since 1997.

Hobbs has also been recognized as a leader in helping to make Agriculture citizen-centered and performance-based. He received Agriculture's Honor Award for Superior Service in 2000, 1996 and 1985.

He co-chairs the Federal CIO Council Workforce and Human Capital for IT Committee, which works to improve the recruitment, retention and skills of the federal IT workforce. Hobbs is also a past president of the Association for Federal Information Resources Management.

Before his positions in the Office of the CIO, Hobbs was Agriculture's director of the Office of Operations, for which he managed the department's four-building headquarters complex, directed the departmental procurement program and was responsible for Agriculture's National Information Technology Center.

Treasury converted the CIO position from political appointee back to a career position because outstanding issues, such as IT governance and security, were on track, said Ladner, who is returning to the private sector. "A number of issues, like IRS, will take years to address and that speaks well of putting someone in place now who will be there well beyond the election and through the coming years," he said.

Hobbs received a bachelor's degree in political science from Florida A&M University and a master's degree in public administration from Florida State University.