Beth Cappello, the deputy chief information officer (CIO) at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), is retiring in the coming weeks after over 30 years of government service.
Rear Adm. Christopher Bartz will be stepping in as DHS’s new deputy CIO, a U.S. Coast Guard spokesperson confirmed to MeriTalk today.
Currently, Bartz serves as the Coast Guard’s CIO and assistant commandant for Command, Control, Communications, Computers and IT (CG-6). He previously served as the Coast Guard’s chief information security officer (CISO) and as the director of Training and Exercises (J7) at the U.S. Cyber Command.
Cappello has served as the deputy CIO at DHS since August 2019. She briefly served as the agency’s acting CIO from November 2019 to May 2020 after John Zangardi resigned.
During her time at DHS, Cappello helped the agency “pivot to a remote workforce almost seamlessly” during the COVID-19 pandemic and took home the “Most Improved” award on behalf of DHS at MeriTalk’s FITARA Awards in 2020.
She has also led the agency’s IT modernization efforts, including by implementing “SecDevOps” and enabling the implementation of zero trust security concepts.
Additionally, she oversaw the agency’s Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure Provider Suite (ECLIPS) program, which will offer a strategic sourcing vehicle useful to all DHS components for cloud adoption.
Previously, Cappello served as the deputy CIO at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the director of IT operations at ICE, and the executive director of the Field Support Directorate within the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Office of Information Technology.
