Bush appoints new 'CIO for the USA'

President Bush has picked US Department of Energy chief information officer Karen Evans to become administrator of information technology and e-government for the federal government.

Evans, a 20-year veteran of the Washington DC bureaucracy, succeeds Mark Forman, who said last month he was leaving because the government didn't pay him well enough. Bush's announcement, released on Wednesday, said Evans will become the associate director of the of information technology and e-government at the US Office of Management and Budget, located in the White House - a post sometimes referred to as the government's CIO.

Before taking the Energy Department position, Evans ran the Information Resources Management Division at the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Justice Programs. The office provides funding for programs including Safe Schools, Safe Start, Community Prosecution and Native American Tribal Courts. Since December 2002, Evans has been the vice chair of the US Chief Information Officers Council.

Evans holds a bachelor's degree in chemistry and a master's of business administration degree from West Virginia University.

Jamie Love, an open source advocate at Ralph Nader's Consumer Project on Technology, said he had made some progress persuading Forman - Evans' predecessor - to move toward open standards and open file formats inside the federal government.

Love hopes Evans will continue that trend. "I want her to require Microsoft or Microsoft's competitors to provide the government with software that saves documents in an open standards-based format," Love said. "The US government can legitimately make that a priority, to make the market more competitive and open."

Declan McCullagh writes for CNET News.com.