Jane Rathbun, the Department of the Navy’s chief information officer (CIO), said on Friday that she is stepping down from that role and closing out a public service career that has spanned more than three decades.
“It is with gratitude, pride, and humility that I close out this chapter of my career as a civil servant,” Rathbun wrote in a LinkedIn post. “It’s hard to sum up 30+ years of an amazing career in national security serving our sailors, marines, soldiers, airmen and guardians, their families and civilians … all of it priceless.”
Rathbun became the Navy’s permanent CIO in 2023 after serving in an acting capacity for several months. In the CIO role, she oversaw a $12 billion-plus IT portfolio and led multiple modernization efforts aimed at overhauling the department’s digital infrastructure.
Among her key initiatives was a push to consolidate aging IT systems into a streamlined, enterprise-driven architecture, along with advancing cloud adoption and zero trust cybersecurity frameworks.
She also recently issued new guidance on containerization technology for software development and continued to champion efforts like Flank Speed, the Navy’s cloud-based productivity platform.
Prior to her tenure as CIO, Rathbun held dual roles as deputy assistant secretary of the Navy for information warfare and enterprise services, and as chief technology officer in the CIO’s office.
Rathbun began her federal service in 1994, and has spent most of her career with the Department of Defense, aside from a two-year period at NASA between 2003 and 2005, where she worked on implementing the agency’s enterprise resource planning system.
Rathbun has not shared her future plans after leaving federal service, and the Navy has not yet announced who will assume the CIO duties in her absence.