FBI appoints new CIO from within
Nine months after the last person in the role departed, the FBI has filled its chief information officer position.
The bureau confirmed to FedScoop that Gordon Bitko will assume the role, after former CIO Jerry Pender left last September for a role with Z Capital Partners, a New York-based private equity firm.
Bitko has worked with the FBI for eight years and is currently a Rand scholar. While at Rand, he has published multiple papers on radio frequency identification.
The bureau has been recruiting for the position since January. Bitko comes into the role as the bureau faces daunting technology challenges on several fronts. The G-men are at the center of the encryption debate in which FBI Director James Comey continues to press private technology companies for backdoors into their systems to locate and stop criminals and terrorists.
The FBI has asked for an additional $38.3 million in the 2017 budget to fund anti-encryption technology and research — more than doubling last year’s $31 million request to nearly $70 million. They are also asking for $85 million for the bureau’s overall cybersecurity program.
Federal News Radio was the first to report Bitko’s hiring.
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