EPA CIO Tapped to be Next Federal CIO

Environmental Protection Agency CIO Carter Farmer is said to take the helm as federal CIO, succeeding Greg Barbaccia who departed Aug. 31, an inside source told GovCIO Media & Research.

At EPA, Farmer oversaw the agency’s technology operations amid advances in artificial intelligence and growing cybersecurity threats to critical infrastructure. He had also joined the board for the Technology Modernization Fund earlier this month.

Securing Critical Infrastructure

Over the past year, EPA and other agencies have faced increased cybersecurity threats to critical infrastructure, where aging operational technology, limited resources and internet-exposed industrial control systems contribute to vulnerabilities.

Recent attacks against more than 30 Minnesota water systems earlier this year highlighted these risks, specifically over internet-facing programmable logic controllers (PLCs).

EPA has worked alongside CISA and the FBI to warn critical infrastructure operators about cyber threats and encourage organizations to better secure OT and internet-of-things devices. The water sector is one of 16 critical infrastructure sectors defined by CISA.

Farmer said agencies are prioritizing efforts to prevent, mitigate and recover from cyberattacks like these.

“Prevention is probably the thing we do best in the federal government … and recovery is something we really need to put a lot of money and effort behind due to the changing landscape,” Farmer said at GovCIO Media & Research’s CyberScape Summit.

Farmer also prioritized asset management to ensure consistent security across connected devices, pointing to visibility as a persistent challenge for large federal organizations.

“You have all kinds of pieces of the government that are moving in different directions at the same time, so you can’t really secure what you don’t know about. You can’t protect it,” Farmer said. “That makes it very difficult to understand the actual attack surface — what it really is, what’s connected to what and how we secure them.”

Artificial Intelligence at EPA

Farmer also pushed EPA to adopt artificial intelligence while emphasizing human oversight, workforce training and strong data foundations.

EPA has embedded AI into lower-risk workflows, including drafting emails, reviewing documents, creating presentations and preparing employees for meetings. Farmer said during a June 11 webinar that automating those administrative tasks could allow employees to spend more time on higher-value work supporting EPA’s mission.

EPA also explored more mission-focused applications, including reviewing public comments and analyzing large scientific datasets.

“We’ve done pilots on everything from reviewing public comments to really looking at large datasets, scientific data and trying to coalesce those,” Farmer said.