Scott Charbo

Homeland Security
Scott Charbo
Chief Information Officer

When he was the chief information officer at the Agriculture Department, Scott Charbo kept a gleaming cane knife prominently displayed in his office. It was a keepsake from his days in the early 1990s as an agricultural extension agent in the Florida sugar cane fields. It was also an apt symbol of how Charbo saw his role as CIO. He was there to hack out the redundant and unnecessary processes and systems that kept the agency from better performing its mission.

Charbo is going to need that knife perhaps more than ever in his new role as CIO of the Homeland Security Department. Only the second information chief in the department's history, Charbo faces a daunting set of challenges. Officials have managed to implement an enterprise architecture, but they're still working on a number of high-profile initiatives that will require integration of multiple systems as well as fortified security to protect sensitive data. The department has received a failing grade for its information security policies, raising the question of whether it's capable of protecting vast amounts of data on, for example, foreign visitors to the United States, who will be logged into the US VISIT entry and exit tracking system.

But Charbo's reputation among colleagues as a steady hand precedes him and might serve him well. At Agriculture, he consolidated systems and cut $162 million from the technology budget in the process. He also was pivotal in bringing Agriculture's bureaus into a more centrally managed enterprise model.

Before taking the CIO job at Agriculture, Charbo was director of the Office of Business and Program Integration at the department's Farm Service Agency. Prior to joining the Bush administration, he was president of mPower3 Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of ConAgra Foods Inc., from 1998 until 2002.