Gregory Barbaccia named federal CIO
The Palantir alum has also served in the Army and as an intelligence analyst.
The U.S. government has a new federal chief information officer, Palantir alum Gregory Barbaccia, who started in the role Monday, according to two people familiar with the personnel change who were not authorized to speak on the record.
He’ll be in charge of overseeing, managing and setting policy for the federal government’s technology. From the perch in the Office of Management and Budget, the OFCIO also has a role to play in developing the IT budget sent to Congress.
Most recently, Barbaccia was the chief information security officer at Theorem, a machine-learning enabled asset manager, according to his LinkedIn, where he posted about his new role Friday. Pagaya Technologies Ltd. agreed to buy the company in July, per Bloomberg.
Before that, Barbaccia worked at Palantir for a decade. He’s also done a short stint at a blockchain intelligence platform, Elementus.
Barbaccia is a former intelligence sergeant with the U.S. Army and former IC intelligence analyst, according to his LinkedIn, but has not formerly been a CIO in a government agency or worked in the government since 2009.
The first Trump administration’s CIO, Suzette Kent, had similarly spent most of her time in the private sector when Trump tapped her for the role in 2018, well into his first administration.
Barbaccia joins a list of other Trump appointees with backgrounds from tech and the software industry. Trump has tapped Tesla CEO Elon Musk himself to lead a government streamlining effort dubbed the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.
With DOGE located in the Office of Management and Budget and focused heavily on tech improvements, it is likely Barbaccia will have some interface with that effort.
The executive order establishing the DOGE within what was formerly the U.S. Digital Service directed the new United States DOGE Service to to improve the government's software, network infrastructure and IT systems. USDS and OFCIO also share a budget.
The original mandate of the DOGE when Trump first announced the effort was about cutting government spending, headcount and regulations, and the DOGE is also tasked with working on the federal hiring freeze in another recent executive order.
Barbaccia takes over from recent federal CIO Clare Martorana, who herself is an alum of USDS and previously served as the CIO of the Office of Personnel Management.