New year, new personnel in industry, government

Nixing the notion that the holidays are no time to find a new job, several federal and industry officials are starting this year with new business cards.

After more than 10 years as president of industry group Information Technology Association of America, Harris Miller resigned to run for the U.S. Senate against GOP incumbent George Allen of Virginia. Sybase Inc.'s Robert Laurence, vice president of public sector, was named interim president succeeding Miller.

Michael Daconta left the Homeland Security Department to become vice president for data enterprise management provider Oberon Associates Inc. Daconta, who came to DHS in August 2004 as director of Enterprise Data Management Office, spent most of his incumbency revising the Federal Enterprise Architecture's Data Reference Model. Brad Eyre, who is on detail from the Coast Guard, has temporarily replaced Daconta at DHS.

New at DHS is Jack Thomas Tomarchio, appointed by President Bush as the principal deputy assistant secretary for information analysis. Tomarchio will act as liaison on intelligence matters among state and local governments, Congress, intelligence agencies and critical infrastructure industry players.

And it's official: Greg Giddens, formerly with the Coast Guard Deepwater program, is now chief of DHS' program management office for the Secure Border Initiative. Since November, he has been overseeing work on SBI, including technology.

Amit Yoran, who in October 2004 left his position as DHS cybersecurity director, is the new president and CEO of In-Q-Tel Inc., the intelligence community's venture capital arm. Yoran succeeds Gilman Louie, who has led In-Q-Tel since its beginnings in 1999. He will leave In-Q-Tel later this year to start a venture capital company in California.

Massachusetts CIO Peter Quinn, a maverick in the push toward open data standards, unexpectedly resigned, saying his presence was undermining the IT division's efforts to adopt by 2007 the Enterprise Technical Reference Model, an open standards initiative.
South Carolina appointed Jim Bryant, a former technology executive with AT&T Corp. and EDS Corp., as the state's new CIO.

Virginia Governor-elect Tim Kaine (D) named Aneesh Chopra, managing director of health care IT consultancy Advisory Board Co., as the state's secretary of technology. Chopra replaces Eugene Huang, who was secretary of technology under Gov. Mark Warner (D).