GSA taps TMF, USDS alum as new FedRAMP director

A former Technology Modernization Fund adviser and U.S. Digital Service engineer has been tapped as the new FedRAMP director, the General Services Administration announced in an internal email Monday.

The appointment of Pete Waterman, who served at GSA as a senior technical adviser for TMF until earlier this year, was revealed to staff members by Lauren Bracey Scheidt, assistant commissioner of the agency’s Technology and Transformation Services Office of Solutions, and Eric Mill, GSA’s executive director for cloud strategy, according to two emails obtained by FedScoop. 

Scheidt said that Waterman, who officially started Monday, will report to her and “build on the FedRAMP team’s considerable transformation momentum, and guide program strategy for 2025 and beyond.” Mill will continue in his position and in his work with the program to “marshall [sic] internal and external support and alignment,” Scheidt added.

Prior to his time with TMF, Waterman worked as a staff engineer at USDS and in the private sector as a lead for commercial cloud-based SaaS, automated data center management systems and machine learning platforms, Scheidt wrote. 

Mill wrote in an internal email that Waterman “is in a great position to build on the direction and momentum the FedRAMP team has this year, establish key relationships across the executive branch for the program and take FedRAMP into its next iteration.”

In a LinkedIn post, Waterman said that he finalized his position as the FedRAMP director with the GSA from a “rocky mountain pass” near a stratovolcano in Oregon. Waterman wrote that he had spent “a lot” of the past year “in the desert and mountains out west,” considering what he wanted to do after his experiences working with the federal government.

In the same post, Waterman noted that “thousands of civil servants” want to use cloud services that they are familiar with or interested in, and need to go through FedRAMP.”

The federal government “has strict rules about its information and how it can be handled, which means every single day civil servants are told they can’t use these services because they haven’t gone through a strict, complex authorization process at their agency,” he wrote. “And the first step of that process is all too often ‘it needs to go through FedRAMP.’”

He continued: The FedRAMP Office “at GSA provides a vital service of making cloud services available to more federal employees with a lower cost and effort for both cloud service providers and federal agencies. This program has been building a ton of momentum over the last year and I’m so stoked to join this team as we look towards a future where civil servants have broader access to secure cloud services.”

Mill said in his email that during fiscal year 2024, the cloud authorization program has grown “substantially,” with several individuals joining the FedRAMP team. The addition of talent has allowed “the program to grow its strategic, operational and technical capacity,” he wrote.

That growth is occurring as the agency has “the wind at its back,” Mill said, referencing the latest White House guidance of FedRAMP released last month. 

“All in all, it makes for a great environment to bring in a new leader to the program and to the community here at TTS,” Mill said. “I’m so glad FedRAMP will be in good hands.”

Federal News Network first reported Waterman’s hiring.