Nuclear Regulatory Commission CIO David Nelson set to retire
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s chief information officer, David Nelson, will be retiring at the end of the week, according to an agency spokesperson.
In an email to FedScoop, the NRC spokesperson said Nelson will be leaving the agency effective Jan. 26. Taking his place as acting chief AI officer and CIO is Scott Flanders, the commission’s current deputy CIO.
Nelson was appointed as the regulatory agency’s CIO in 2016, leaving his previous position as CIO and director of the Office of Enterprise Information for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Nelson was recently appointed as the NRC’s CAIO, in light of a long-awaited executive order on AI from President Joe Biden. While the order did not include the NRC as an agency that will be required to eventually name a CAIO, the commission told FedScoop previously that it was “assessing whether and how it applies.”
Additionally, the NRC spokesperson confirmed that Victor Hall, the deputy director of the Division of Systems Analysis in the Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research, serves as the responsible AI official under Executive Order 13960, issued by the Trump administration. The NRC was also exempted from that requirement as an independent regulatory agency.
