Dave Allen

Deputy CIO

National Reconnaissance Office (NRO)

In June 2013, Mr. Allen was appointed the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO’s) Deputy Chief Information Officer (CIO) and Deputy Director of the Chief Information
Office. With the September 2014 merger of the NRO’s CIO and Communications Systems Directorate (COMM), Mr. Allen has added the title as Deputy Director, COMM.
Mr. Allen is a second generation Agency careerist and has served the Agency since 1984, holding numerous positions of increasing responsibility. From 1986 to 1998, Mr. Allen served in several project management capacities in support of the SAFE Program, including leading the system testing and system development and maintenance segments of the program. From 1994 to 1998, Mr. Allen served as the Program Manager responsible for the development and delivery of the Corporate Information Retrieval and Storage System (CIRAS), which replaced the legacy SAFE system. From 1998 to 2001, Mr. Allen served as the Deputy Chief of the DS&Ts Information Services Center overseeing the technical/operations support activities inclusive of application development, network engineering, and close support services.
From 2001 to 2003, Mr. Allen managed the Architecture and Planning Staff in the Intelligence to the Web Program Office (iWeb), where he led a cadre of engineers responsible for strategic architecture and investment planning activities for the Program Office. With the merger of the iWeb Program and the CIO/Application Services in 2003,
Mr. Allen assumed the role of Deputy Group Chief, Analysis and Production Applications Group, responsible for delivering mission enabling IT solutions to the Directorate of Intelligence. In the fall of 2003, Mr. Allen was appointed to the Chief,Analysis and Production Group where he served until his appointment to the Deputy Chief, Application Services in 2004.
From 2004 to 2007, Mr. Allen served as the Deputy Chief, Applications Services. In this capacity, he led a large office that designs, builds, and supports CIA information systems ranging in size from enterprise-wide corporate applications to small group software tools. An Application Services strategic goal is to create an advanced information technology environment – consisting of tools, processes, and infrastructure - that enables applications to be developed efficiently and in timely response to changing Agency needs.
From 2007 to 2009, Mr. Allen was responsible for the standup and operation of a new Corporate Business Operations Group (CBO) in Application Services. This group integrated several interrelated enterprise business service groups into a single business element with the goal or streamlining a number of redundant service areas. In large part, the CBO established an enterprise business model encompassing Enterprise Application Architecture and Corporate Investment/portfolio planning, with the goal of leveraging strategic and tactical activity planning to drive both strategic and tactical investment planning.
From 2009 to 2011, Mr. Allen assumed the Deputy CIO role and served as the Deputy Chief, National Counterterrorism Center/Mission Systems (NCTC/MS) position where he was responsible for the leadership and management of a centralized information technology organization. The Office of Mission Systems is responsible for strategic and tactical information technology planning and execution at the NCTC, inclusive of application architecture, mission application design and development, application hosting/provisioning, and system/software maintenance and operations.
From 2011 to 2013, Mr Allen served as the Director of the Planning and Governance Office in the NRO’s CIO organization where he was responsible for leading strategic IT investment planning for the enterprise, along with overseeing the development and compliance of information technology, information assurance, and information management policy and governance activities.

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