Defense Information Systems Agency Makes Leadership ChangesDefense Information Systems Agency Makes Leadership Changes

The Defense Information Systems Agency, which provides networking and computing services to the rest of the Department of Defense, is making a number of changes to its leadership, DISA director Lt. Gen. Carroll Pollett announced Friday.

Three of DISA's top officials -- the agency's director for strategic planning and information, CIO, and another top IT chief -- will soon leave or have recently left their positions, and DISA has hired and promoted replacements.

The top official to leave is director of strategic planning and information and former CIO John Garing, who is retiring at the end of June. Garing had served in a number of IT leadership positions for DISA after a long career in the Air Force and a few years in the private sector.

Replacing Garing will be Paige Atkins, former director of DISA's Defense Spectrum Organization, which helps plot out the military's electromagnetic spectrum plans. Atkins was previously director of advanced network systems at Cisco Systems.

Another internal hire is new CIO Henry Sienkiewicz, who's replacing Bobbie Stempfley. Stempfley left the agency last month to take over the Department of Homeland Security's National Cyber Security Division.

Sienkiewicz is best known as one of the key leaders behind DISA's private cloud computing infrastructure, the Rapid Access Computing Environment, and open source and DoD community-source software development and sharing effort Forge.mil. In addition to numerous positions in and outside of the military, most recently as DISA's technical program director for computing services, Sienkiewicz founded a hotel management and car rental business software company.

The final piece of the triumvirate of changes will be Daniel Bradford, who will replace recent retiree Richard Williams as principal director of Global Information Grid enterprise services engineering, where he'll head up DISA's networking efforts. Bradford will come on board from the Army, where he was senior technical director of the Army Network Enterprise Technology Command.