The Chief Information Officer (CIO) is charged with the establishment of a management framework to improve the planning and control of information technology investments and leading change to improve planning and control of information technology investments.
The Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO) provides the technological solutions that enable the Department of Education to deliver world-class service to schools, students and their families.
To accomplish its mission, OCIO advises and assists the Secretary and other senior officers in acquiring information technology (IT) and managing information resources. OCIO helps these leaders comply with the best practices in the industry and applicable federal laws and regulations, including the Clinger Cohen Act, the Government Paperwork Reduction Act and the Federal Information Security Management Act. In addition, the agency's Chief Information Officer is charged with establishing a management framework that leads the agency toward more efficient and effective operations, including improved planning and control of IT investments.
The agency's CIO is charged with implementing the operative principles identified in the Act requiring the establishment of a management framework to improve the planning and control of information technology investments and leading change to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of agency operations.
The CIO reports directly to the Secretary of Education and provides leadership and direction to:
The following laws and guidelines govern the operation of OCIO and the management and oversight of information technology investments throughout the Department of Education.
Thomas Flagg brings over two decades of business and information technology knowledge composed of both private sector and government experiences. He previously served as the Director of Business Application Services within the Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO) at the United States Department of Labor (DOL). In that role, he led a team of three executives, and approximately 120 federal and 600+ contract staff in building and delivering business applications to the 26 DOL subcomponent mission agencies and the public. Prior to that, he served as the Directorate of Information Technology Operations and Services.
He actively led his management team in setting strategy, vision and direction to derive DOL’s operational plan, and collaborated with the serviced agencies to manage and execute plan implementation using departmental capabilities. He was instrumental in the recent Enterprise Shared Service Information Technology consolidation activities within DOL helping to integrate over 22 subcomponent agencies under the authority of the CIO. This effort proved to help improve DOL’s Enterprise Architecture, Governance and Procurement Strategies, and saved DOL significant IT expenses resulting from more efficient use of IT resources.
He was also honored to receive the Service to the Citizen Award for his leadership of IT Operations for the Department of labor during the Covid-19 pandemic ensuring minimal downtime of DOL staff to immediately transition to 100% telework.
Prior to joining the Senior Executive Service, he served as the Director of IT for the Wage and Hour Division, a Supervisory IT Specialist and a technical and management advisor to the Director of IT within the Office of Workers Compensation Programs (OWCP). Prior to working within OWCP, he was within the Employment Training Administrator (ETA) serving as the branch chief and working to expand the program management office for the Agency.
Before converting to federal service in June 2013, Thomas worked as a small business consultant within ETA and has firsthand experience delivering systems as a web application programmer and project manager for the Office of Foreign Labor Certification, National Emergency Grants (now known as National Dislocation Worker Grants) and a multitude of other ETA systems. His additional work experiences in the private sector were as the Internet Services Manager at Recorded Books (the largest manufacturer of recorded audio), Lead Software Developer and Technology Manager of the InTouch patient medical records pharmacy system at Health Objects (a health services IT subsidiary of OmniCare—the largest institutional pharmacy at that time), the Manager and Technical Lead of the Insurance vertical at ZonaFinanciera.com (a Latin American financial services firm based in Fairfax, VA during the dot com era), GTE (prior to and during the Verizon Merger) and Intel Corporation as technical management contributor and trainee.
Thomas was born and raised in the Washington DC area. He received his Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from Howard University in 1998, and later received a Master's in Business Administration and also a Master's in Business Management with a focus on Information Systems Management from the University of Maryland’s Smith School of Business in 2009. Thomas also holds numerous technical certifications.