United States Department of Commerce
GSA Acquisition Officer Bound for White House Role
Anne Rung to serve as senior adviser, possibly as procurement chief.
After two months of press and industry speculation, the General Services Administration has announced that its top acquisition policy officer will become a senior adviser at the White House, possibly a step toward filling the vacant post of administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy.
GSA Administrator Dan Tangherlini, in a May 12 staff email released Monday to Government Executive, wrote, “At the end of the month, Anne Rung, associate administrator of the Office of Governmentwide Policy, will be heading to the White House Office of Management and Budget as a senior adviser. While I am sad to see Anne leave GSA, she will only be a couple of blocks away and I know that we will continue to collaborate with her to make government more effective and efficient. Anne has been an integral part of the leadership team since her start at GSA in 2012. She has worked tirelessly to help our entire agency develop policies and initiatives that deliver the best value and savings to the agencies that we serve and the American people.”
In March, Federal Computer Week had reported that Rung was to be the next head of the White House procurement shop vacated in December by Joe Jordan, who went to the private firm Fedbid. OMB has not confirmed that Rung will run that office.
Rung took the reins of GSA’s governmentwide policy operations in August 2013, overseeing efforts at transparency, public access to information, acquisition policy, strategic sourcing, asset and transportation management, high-performance green buildings and information sharing.
Before joining GSA, Rung was senior director of administration at the Commerce Department, where she worked in acquisition reform. She played a similar role at the state level in Pennsylvania’s General Services Department. She also spent five years as congressional director of the nonprofit Democratic Leadership Council in Washington.
Reached for comment, Jordan said, “Anne is a highly-respected member of the acquisition community, and OMB is lucky to have her in any capacity. She is immensely knowledgeable about government procurement at both the federal and state level, and even more importantly, has a proven track record as a results-oriented agency leader. I am confident that she will do incredibly well at OMB and is the perfect person to partner with Deputy Director for Management Beth Cobert, and the great career OMB team to improve procurement outcomes and deliver on the president’s second term management agenda.”
The OFPP job has been filled temporarily by Deputy Administrator Lesley Field.