Trump admin moves to make tech officials appointees amid DOGE clashes
Donald Trump's administration is moving to exert more control over the federal government's technology, ordering that CIOs should be politically appointed.
The Trump administration is moving to exert more control over the federal government’s technology, turning the people who oversee that infrastructure into political appointees it can hire and fire at will.
Currently, each agency’s chief information officer is a civil servant in a nonpartisan job, known in the Office of Personnel Management as “career reserved,” which provides some protections against firings. The change, which OPM announced in a memo Tuesday, will make the roles “general,” opening them up to a wide variety of appointees. The shift is set to happen no later than Feb. 14.
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Acting OPM Director Charles Ezell said in the memo that the move will better align those employees with the Trump administration’s agenda.
“No longer the station of impartial and apolitical technocrats, the modern agency CIO role demands policy-making and policy-determining capabilities across a range of controversial political topics,” Ezell wrote.
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