Vaughn Noga

Federal Leadership of the Year

CIO Vaughn Noga said he is most proud of the “we-can attitude” the EPA team demonstrated in the early days of the pandemic when it was focused on switching to remote work — fixing connectivity issues, expanding training for collaboration tools and finding workarounds for once routine in-person practices. That said, he is looking forward to returning to the office, noting the value of spontaneous conversations with coworkers and the importance of social interaction. Some of the pandemic-forced implementations, however, should continue, like working to reduce and eventually eliminate printing. Modernization efforts should always be advancing, he said, before the next crisis forces it. “We must stop thinking about IT modernization as a discreet event, but rather embrace a philosophy of continual modernization,” he said. “We shouldn’t wait until something has passed its useful lifecycle before we begin to think about its replacement.”