The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has appointed James Saunders as the agency’s chief information security officer (CISO), according to a knowledgeable source who said the move was announced within the agency on Feb. 23.
Saunders is no stranger to OPM, having served as senior advisor for cloud and cybersecurity at the agency since May 2021. He’s also well known in Federal government tech circles, and a frequent speaker at government tech events.
Prior to moving to the senior advisor role at OPM, Saunders was CISO at the Small Business Administration (SBA) from February 2020 to March 2021, and part of the SBA tech team that worked to enable huge new Federal funding assistance outflows following the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.
His official move to the OPM tech C-suite marks a reunion at that level with Guy Cavallo, who became CIO at OPM in 2021, and was deputy CIO at SBA before that.
