Washington, D.C., CTO Lindsey Parker named mayor’s chief of staff | StateScoop

Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser on Friday named Lindsey Parker, the town’s chief know-how officer and assistant metropolis administrator, as her new chief of employees, following 4 years of Parker within the metropolis’s high IT function.

Parker’s appointment as Bowser’s new high aide got here alongside the sudden departure of the mayor’s longtime chief of employees and political adviser, John Falcicchio, for an unspecified private-sector function, in accordance with a press launch from the mayor’s workplace. Falcicchio joined Bowser’s administration when the mayor took workplace in 2015, and in 2019 he was given the extra title of deputy mayor for planning and financial growth, overseeing the capital metropolis’s relationships with the enterprise group.

Bowser appointed Keith Anderson, director of the D.C. Division of Basic Companies, to function deputy mayor on an interim foundation.

Parker can also be a longtime Bowser aide. She was named CTO in February 2019 after spending the mayor’s first time period as deputy chief of employees. Parker acquired the extra title of assistant metropolis administrator in October 2021. Bowser was elected to her third consecutive four-year time period final November. Parker first labored for Bowser in 2014 as a legislative director within the then-D.C. Council member’s workplace.

The mayor’s workplace credited Parker with “modernizing authorities operations and enhancing transparency and accountability by use of know-how” and growing citywide tech plans.

“She has been working to deliver a know-how focus to the federal government’s operations, streamline processes, and enhance constituent service supply — together with the launch of a brand new enterprise portal,” the press launch learn, referencing a brand new web site the town launched final month with the intention of creating it simpler for companies to navigate the District’s regulatory processes.

In an interview final month, Parker stated she needed to slim down the town authorities’s glut of purposes, which she stated quantity greater than 1,700 throughout dozens of federated companies.

“The actual fact we have now 1,700 apps is the issue,” she stated. “We must always take into consideration streamlining that for our inside use and our exterior use.”

The enterprise portal was the primary main challenge accomplished by a digital companies group D.C. established in 2021. On the time, Parker stated the group would work to place “human-centered design entrance and heart” of a metropolis authorities that had typically acquired low marks for its digital choices, together with its preliminary COVID-19 vaccine registration web page.

Bowser has to this point oriented her third time period round revitalizing D.C.’s downtown financial system, which was battered by the pandemic and continues to endure a sluggish restoration because the federal authorities and different main employers delay their returns to every day in-person work. The mayor has additionally needed to cope with an increase in crimes like murder and carjacking, which grew to become a nationwide story earlier this month when Congress overruled the D.C. Council’s passage of a felony sentencing reform invoice, which Bowser herself had vetoed. (Whereas the District of Columbia enjoys residence rule, its native legal guidelines are topic to approval by Congress.) President Joe Biden, regardless of earlier endorsing D.C. statehood, has stated he will sign the disapproval.

Bowser has not but named Parker’s alternative.