MeriTalk recognized 17 Federal agencies for their excellence in IT during the FITARA Awards ceremony at Tech Tonic on Thursday evening, with Federal chief information officers (CIOs) taking home awards to celebrate their success on the 18th edition of the FITARA Scorecard.
The FITARA Scorecard grades are compiled by leadership of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee with input from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and have been published semi–annually since 2015.
Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va. – author of the FITARA legislation and ranking member of the House Oversight Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Information Technology, and Government Innovation – issued the 18th edition of the FITARA Scorecard in September in which Federal agencies received the highest number of overall ‘A’ grades ever.
MeriTalk Founder Steve O’Keeffe congratulated the FITARA Awards winners for their agencies’ record-shattering performance on the 18th version of the FITARA Scorecard and looked ahead to a “lot of change on the docket” for government technology in 2025.
Among the catalysts for change, he said, will be the work of President-elect Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) advisory group with opportunities to deal with waste, fraud, and abuse, and the appointment of Rep. Connolly to become ranking member of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee beginning in January.
“We look at the potential to go forward and make meaningful change” in the efficiency of government technology, he said. As one example, O’Keeffe suggested, “Just imagine if, instead of every Federal agency having its own web architecture and web platform, what if there were one system that worked across Federal agencies, which would be easier for people to navigate as citizens and would also be much easier to secure.”
He pointed to findings from MeriTalk’s FY25 Federal CIO Forecast that show Federal CIO agendas topped with cybersecurity, workforce transformation, and artificial intelligence, and predicted those priorities will evolve with the incoming Trump administration.
“We’re going to see things like data management and IT modernization, which maybe are not particularly sexy topics, but if you’re trying to standardize in order to find waste and abuse, you’re going to have to modernize,” O’Keeffe said. He added, “I think we’re also going to see things like artificial intelligence move way up in terms of leadership support.”
We chatted with some of the CIO teams to learn what receiving a FITARA Award means to them, and to hear who they have to thank for all of the hard work that goes into building an excellent CIO shop.
Guy Cavallo, CIO at the Office of Personnel Management, said of his agency’s award for “Most Improved” in the FITARA cloud category, “We take very seriously our FITARA scores, and so it was a priority for my team – especially when we previously had an ‘F’ in the cloud category when we are one of the leaders – to move that to an ‘A,’ so I am most proud of getting that recognition.”
He gave credit for the agency’s improved FITARA scores to a “combination of my cyber team, my cloud team, and my apps team.” And Cavallo said, “OPM is a much different organization today than it was four years ago. We’re primarily cloud-based, our cybersecurity is much better than it was, and my team is fabulous.”
Justice Department CIO Melinda Rogers, whose team also took home a “Most Improved” award in the cloud category, credited the “entire Office of the CIO, as well as all of the IT professionals at the component agencies within the Department of Justice.”
“To achieve these gains was not easy,” she said. “It took hard work, and it really took a village, and we are very honored to be the recipient of recognition tonight.
Clyde Richards, deputy CIO at the National Science Foundation – whose agency won an award for “Most Improved” in the FITARA cyber category, said, “I want to thank MeriTalk for consistently recognizing the National Science Foundation, and I also want to thank our fantastic team at NSF for doing the job they have done to make sure that we are improving our FITARA scores.”
“We appreciate being recognized for the hard work that we’ve done to improve our cybersecurity, and it’s required the efforts not of just the people in the CIO organization, but throughout the department,” said Department of Transportation CIO Cordell Schachter, who took home a FITARA Award for “Most Improved” in cyber. “We really appreciate everyone’s efforts to make everybody safer.”
Vicki Michetti, the deputy chief information officer (DCIO) for enterprise IT policy governance at the Department of Energy, also received a FITARA Award for “Most Improved – Cyber Category.”
“[Our award] is in a cyber category, so it really reflects a lot of very hard work that’s been done across the department in the last year or so,” said Michetti. “We’re excited about it because people have invested time and resources and money and everything to really shore up some of our internal defenses, and I think that that’s what it’s all about.”
Tanya Hicks, director of FITARA at the Department of Commerce, said of her agency’s FITARA Award for “Most Improved” in the cloud category, “[This] is inspirational because it allowed us to see our evolution in real terms.”
“We have to know that this is not just about giving out gold stars. It’s about gaining the evolution to be successful in all that we do. And it takes time to get there,” Hicks added. “The thing about FITARA is it’s the best-in-class work that we should do day in and day out anyway. And we see the evolution of hard work through this type of award ceremonies.”
Receiving the FITARA Award for “Most Improved” in both the cloud and cyber categories, Hemant Baidwan, the chief information security officer (CISO) at the Department of Homeland Security, acknowledged the work CISOs put into securing data and systems.
“Shout out to all the CISOs and all the CIOs for amazing leadership,” said Baidwan, who noted the “amazing mission and purpose” of CISOs in leading cybersecurity efforts across agencies.
“[I’m] very proud of the team and all the hard work and dedication,” said Marcela Escobar-Alava, the deputy commissioner and CIO at the Social Security Agency (SSA), after receiving this year’s FITARA Award for “Most Improved – Cloud Category.”
The SSA team is “always looking to find continuous improvements and get the job done for the agency,” Escobar-Alava said.