The Department of Justice (DOJ) elevated Shantrell “Nikki” Collier, who previously served as the agency’s deputy chief information officer (CIO), to the permanent CIO role.
The DOJ’s CIO leadership page, which was updated on Feb. 23, now lists Collier as the CIO and deputy assistant attorney general for information resources management. Collier’s LinkedIn profile also shows she assumed the CIO role this month.
The DOJ did not immediately respond to MeriTalk’s request for comment on Collier’s new role.
Collier served as the DOJ’s deputy CIO since January 2025. Before that, she served as the DOJ’s chief of staff to the assistant attorney general of administration, according to her LinkedIn profile.
Previously, Collier served as the CIO of the Office of Marine and Aviation Operations in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
She also served as the acting deputy director of service delivery staff in the DOJ’s Office of the Chief Information Officer.
“She was the project lead for the department’s move to Microsoft 365; she managed various contracts totaling $23 million and oversaw the migration of 120,000 email accounts to the cloud to consolidate 23 disparate email systems,” Collier’s DOJ profile page adds.
In addition to her technology-focused roles, Collier served for 22 years in the U.S. Army.
Speaking at an event held by Cisco and MeriTalk in September, Collier said she plans to accelerate artificial intelligence (AI) deployment at the DOJ, but she first wants to make sure the proper protections are in place.
“For the Department of Justice, just full transparency, we’re not where I would like us to be with AI, and that’s intentional,” Collier said at the time.
“With AI, I want to take those very aggressive steps, and I think the telemetry is there,” she said, adding, “But I do want to make sure we put those guardrails and those policies in place to be able to protect the data when we start to leverage [AI].”