Gibson officially tapped to serve as CMO

President Trump announced this week he's selected Jay Gibson to serve as the Pentagon's new chief management officer, a move expected since Gibson was confirmed as deputy CMO late last year.

The CMO is a new role created by the Fiscal Year 2018 National Defense Authorization Act. The position is the Defense Department's "No. 3" official in the leadership chart, taking the place of the under secretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, which is being split into two new roles.

Gibson was confirmed as DCMO in November. Last month, Deputy Defense Secretary Pat Shanahan said Gibson would be elevated to the CMO position early this year.

Shanahan said Gibson's work will fall into two primary areas: "doing a more full integration of the 'fourth estate' into the Department of Defense" and "shifting from service-led functions into more enterprise-led functions" in areas including human resources and finance. The fourth estate includes entities not in the military departments or combatant commands.

Gibson has already been tapped by Shanahan to lead DOD's effort to accelerate the department's migration to cloud services. In a Jan. 8 memo, he directed Gibson to implement a cloud acquisition strategy and establish a cloud computing program.