Effective December 8, 2008, Sanjeev “Sonny” Bhagowalia became the Chief Information Officer (CIO) of the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI), reporting directly to the Secretary. DOI is a large, decentralized agency with over 67,000 employees and 236,000 volunteers located at approximately 2,400 operating locations across the United States, Puerto Rico, U.S. territories, and freely associated states with a $15.8 billion total annual budget. The Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO) provides leadership to the Department and all its bureaus in all areas of Information Resource Management (IRM) and Information Technology (IT). As CIO, Mr. Bhagowalia provides leadership of a $1 billion annual IT portfolio across the Department. Mr. Bhagowalia manages the IT infrastructure (hardware and software), applications and information resources supporting Interior's varied mission areas, including Fish, Wildlife and Parks, Indian Affairs, Land and Minerals Management, Water and Science, Policy, Financial and Business Management. Mr. Bhagowalia’s responsibilities include all Twelve Core Competency areas under the Clinger-Cohen Act of 1996, the E-Government Act of 2002, and all applicable laws, regulations, and directives. These core competency areas include: Acquisition, Policy, Strategic Planning, Performance and Results-Based Management, Process Improvement, Capital Planning and Investment, Leadership, Project Management, Technology Assessment, Security and Information Assurance, E-Government/E-Business and Architecture and Infrastructure.

Before accepting this position, Mr. Bhagowalia recently served as the CIO for Indian Affairs (IA) in the US Department of the Interior from August 2007 until December 2008. IA is a 10,500 employee, $2.3 billion organization with 148 locations throughout the U.S. with management of 61 schools and two colleges. Indian Affairs provides comprehensive services to 1.7 million Native Americans and Alaskan Natives in 562 Federally recognized Tribes with 66 million acres of land in trust and 44,000 Indian students. The IA CIO is responsible for all IT and IRM for IA and oversees an IT portfolio of 45 systems/applications across six lines of business with a budget of $100 million. Key CIO accomplishments include: the historic reconnection of half of Indian Affairs to the Internet at 148 locations in two months after being disconnected for six and a half years; all green rating on the President’s Management Agenda/E-Gov scorecard from DOI and OMB for all eight areas for the first time in IA history; and implementation of successful enterprise programs to upgrade IT infrastructure, IT security, information portal and key IT services through the use of government and industry best practices. He has been selected for the 2008 Secretary’s Gold Award for Exceptional Executive Service.

Mr. Bhagowalia also served with distinction in the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the U.S. Department of Justice as a Senior-Level employee and member of the Senior Executive Service (SES) from July 1999 through August 2007. The FBI is the world’s premier law enforcement agency, with over 31,000 employees in 500 locations world-wide with an annual budget of $6.8 billion and a diverse mission. In his capacity as a Program Management Executive, he assisted the CIO in overseeing a technology budget of a $1 billion and managing eight of the twelve CIO core competency areas. His key accomplishments include the architecture, acquisition of funds and implementation of the $450 million IT Infrastructure Upgrade, Technology Refresh and Operations and Maintenance Programs (after 9/11), the business case and acquisition of funds for the Information Assurance Program (after the Hanssen Spy Case), and the implementation of a comprehensive IT Governance and Strategic Management framework, in support of Criminal, Intelligence, Counter-Terrorism and Counter-Intelligence missions. Mr. Bhagowalia received the Presidential Rank Award for Meritorious Executive in 2006 and top SES ratings throughout his tenure for his accomplishments. His management team received the Director’s Award for Special Achievement in 2005 – a first for an IT Team in the FBI.

Mr. Bhagowalia also served with distinction in industry for 14 years in Boeing, a Fortune 50 company, from July 1985 until July 1999. At age 34, he was recognized and inducted into the Boeing Technical Excellence Fellowship Program (Top Engineers and Scientists in the Company) as a Senior Principal Engineer and also held positions as a Manager and Chief Engineer/Architect in Boeing Information Services in support of Systems Integration and Business Development for U.S. Government Civilian, Defense and Intelligence Community Clients. He architected, designed and implemented technical and business solutions of medium-to-large size, scope and complexity for these U.S. Government clients. He served as a Senior Principal Engineer on the nine-year, $750 million, NASA Program Support Communications Contract architecting, implementing and supporting NASA’s global IT infrastructure with links to academia, industry and international space agencies. He received numerous awards from U.S. Government and Boeing, including NASA Award of Merit, NASA Silver Snoopy Award, NASA Space Transportation System Mission Support Award, and Boeing Technical Excellence Fellowship Program.

Mr. Bhagowalia has a Masters of Science (MS) Degree in IRM (2000) from Syracuse University, a MS in Electrical Engineering (1985) and Bachelors of Science in Electrical Engineering (1983) from Louisiana State University (LSU). Mr. Bhagowalia has the honor of being a Distinguished/Top Academic Graduate with a CIO Certificate (1999) and an IRM Diploma (1998) from the National Defense University (NDU), Fort McNair, Washington, D.C.