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Celebrating 25 Years

GCN Home > 09/16/02 issue

Their job: Find the best fit for people in IT jobs

By Jason Miller, GCN Staff

Between them, Laura Callahan and Ira Hobbs bring more than 40 years of federal service to their positions as co-chairs of the CIO Council's Workforce and Human Capital for IT Committee.

Callahan, deputy CIO of the Labor Department, and Hobbs, deputy CIO of the Agriculture Department, tap that experience when working with the Office of Personnel Management and other agencies to improve the hiring and retention of federal IT workers.

Callahan has been in her Labor post since 1999. She oversees the department's $420 million IT budget and is responsible for the daily operations of the department's core networks, as well as all application systems.

Before coming to Labor, she worked for the Defense Department in a several jobs, including programmer, systems engineer and systems security officer. She also oversaw the network and desktop computing environment for the Executive Office of the President.

Callahan has bachelor's and master's degrees in computer science and a doctorate in computer information systems from Hamilton University in Wyoming.

Hobbs served as acting Agriculture CIO from February 2001 until the appointment last month of Scott Charbo as CIO.

As acting CIO, Hobbs oversaw 4,000 IT employees and helped manage a $1.7 billion IT program. He has been the department's deputy CIO since June 1997.

Last month, he returned to his duties as deputy.

Prior to his deputy CIO post, Hobbs was the director of USDA's Office of Operations from 1994 to 1997.

In that job, he managed a four-building complex, the department's procurement program and the National IT Center. Before that, he was director of the Information Systems and Communications Division for Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.

Hobbs has a bachelor's degree in political science from Florida A&M University and a master's in public administration from Florida State University. He also spent three years in the Army. GCN staff writer Jason Miller interviewed Callahan and Hobbs at Callahan's Washington office.

GCN: The CIO Council’s Workforce and Human Capital for IT Committee has been busy over the last year. Has this effort paid off in improving the way the government recruits, hires and retains IT workers?

More news on related topics: IT Management, Web Strategies, COOP / Telework, IT in Action