Guy Cavallo
Chief Information Officer, Office of Personnel Management
Guy Cavallo made a big impact on OPM in his 20th year as a federal employee. He helped make the agency a top federal IT organization, which is now helping 2.1 million federal employees and 2.6 million retirees through digital transformation. Cavallo’s leadership has transformed OPM and set a high standard for excellence going forward.
A critical component of this success was for Cavallo to rebuild the Office of the CIO executive team. For the first time in years, OPM’s CIO office is fully staffed with the addition of nine new executives. With his team in place, Cavallo launched technology modernization initiatives, including establishing OPM’s cloud data center. His team successfully migrated 31 on-premises applications to the cloud, improving IT performance while ensuring OPM and other agency employees can securely access critical HR resources.
Under Cavallo’s leadership, the OCIO made significant improvements in technology development, modernization and customer service. It moved from 19th to third place in the General Services Administration’s CFO Act Agency IT customer satisfaction survey and rose from 20th to sixth for operations and maintenance. These improvements reflect Cavallo’s impact on organizational efficiency and productivity.
Why Watch
Cavallo’s main focus in 2023 is to improve citizen experiences, or CX, enhance cybersecurity and continue transforming legacy IT systems and processes into cloud-based services. He implemented an OPM Digital Services team that uses SAFe agile methodologies and is staffed with full-time employees to lead all CX improvement projects at OPM.
Another initiative of Cavallo’s is to bring in early-career talent to support OPM in today and in the future. He implemented an intern program last year that brought in 16 interns, some of whom were hired after graduation. This summer, Cavallo is leading a similar effort to offer more opportunities for early-career talent to join the federal government.