About the CIO

Michael J. Howell Chief Information Officer U.S. Department of the Interior

On May 14, 2007, Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne appointed Michael J. Howell Chief Information Officer for the Department of the Interior. The Chief Information Officer reports directly to the Secretary. The Office of the Chief Information Officer provides leadership to the Department and its bureaus in all areas of information management and technology.

Before accepting this position, Mr. Howell served as the Assistant Director for Information Resources and Technology Management and Chief Information Officer for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Prior to that, he served as Chief, Information Technology Portfolio Management Division in the Department's Office of the Chief Information Officer, where he was responsible for overseeing the management of the Department's $900 million a year portfolio of IT investments. He served two years as the acting CIO and deputy CIO for the Bureau of Land Management and five years in BLM's headquarters budget office.

Mr. Howell spent four years at BLM's Oregon State Office as a branch chief, responsible for software application development, Geographic Information Systems applications, and data and records management programs. He managed IT and GIS support for the President's Northwest Forest Plan and the Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management Project. Mike spent seven years in BLM's Eugene District on forest inventory, land use planning, and National Environmental Policy Act analysis. He worked five years in a variety of forest management jobs in the Medford District in southwest Oregon. Mike's career began in 1978 with the U.S. Forest Service in the Coeur d'Alene National Forest in Idaho and the Olympic National Forest in Washington.

A native of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, Mike graduated in 1977 from Pennsylvania State University with a bachelor of science degree in Forest Science with a minor in Wildlife Management. In 2005, he completed the Chief Information Officer certification program at the National Defense University IRM College. Mike and his wife Gretchen have a son Sean and a daughter Victoria.