Mark Rutledge, CIO of Kentucky, resigned in December 2007. Rick Boggs served as acting commissioner for the Commonwealth Office of Technology (COT) until February, when Steve Dooley was appointed interim commissioner and CIO. Rutledge's resignation follows former Gov. Ernie Fletcher's executive order to restructure COT, which included a statewide consolidation initiative.
P.K. Agarwal, California's chief technology officer, has been named president of the National Electronic Commerce Coordinating Council (NECCC), a consortium of public- and private-sector leaders who work together to identify strategic change in government. Agarwal was a founding member of NECCC when it was created in 1997.
Departures: Tony Cira has resigned as CIO for the Federal Emergency Management Agency; Jerry Williams, deputy CIO, and Chris Niedermayer, associate CIO for information and technology management, both resigned from the U.S. Department of Agriculture; Pat Groff, CIO, Sacramento County, Calif., has announced his retirement, effective March 2008.
Recognitions: Steve Reneker, CIO of the city of Riverside, received the 2007 Best of California award for Demonstrated Leadership in Management of Information Technology; Peter Collins, CIO of Austin, Texas, was recognized in January by the state's Department of Information Resources as CIO of the Year during the Government Technology Conference Southwest in Austin.