Deputy CIO Sonny Hashmi named acting CIO of General Services Administration.

After greater than a decade on the General Services Administration, CIO Casey Coleman is leaving for the non-public sector, joining AT&T Government Solutions as an executive VP for client relations. Sonny Hashmi, GSA’s deputy CIO, will function acting CIO.

“Advances in cloud, mobility, big data, and security present federal organizations with a brand new world of opportunities,” Coleman said in an announcement about her decision to go back to the non-public sector.

“Casey is celebrated and revered throughout the federal technology sector as a real leader,” said Kay Kapoor, president of AT&T Government Solutions, praising Coleman’s “visionary leadership, technological know-how, and public sector expertise.”

During her tenure at GSA, Coleman led the government’s first migration to the cloud, using the Google Apps for presidency platform for email and collaboration. The move saved GSA greater than $15 million over five years. But more importantly, it established a template for other federal agencies emigrate their email systems to the cloud.

[Migrating email to the cloud only solves component to the matter for CIOs. Read Tools That Soothe Enterprise Email Pain]

Coleman also led the combination of GSA IT infrastructure operations right into a single program, closing 37 datacenters, consolidating 40 contracts and 15 help desks, and collectively saving greater than $100 million. She also directed the consolidation of GSA’s seven IT offices under the Office of the CIO, with three-year savings of $60 million.

As a member of the Federal CIO Council, Coleman created the council’s steering committee that resulted in the Obama administration’s “cloud first” initiative. She also helped create FedRAMP, the govt program that streamlined cloud computing certifications for federal agencies.

Coleman first came to GSA in 2002 as CTO and deputy associate administrator for the newly-created Office of Citizen Services. She became CIO of the agency’s Federal Acquisition Service in 2004 and have become CIO of the total agency in 2007.

Prior to joining the GSA, Coleman worked in numerous capacities for several technology companies, including Lockheed Martin and Kana Software.

GSA Administrator Dan Tangherlini praised Coleman’s pioneering accomplishments. “Under her leadership, GSA has achieved several ‘firsts’ for the govt in mobility, cloud computing, social media and collaboration initiatives,” Tangherlini said in an announcement.

Mike Hettinger, senior VP of public sector at TechAmerica, the technology trade association, praised Coleman’s performance while at GSA. “Casey has led a few of the most vital evolutions of technology within GSA, and her work will reverberate because the government continues to modernize how it serves citizens,” Hettinger said in an announcement.

Private clouds are moving rapidly from concept to production. But some fears about expertise and integration still linger. Also within the Private Clouds Step Up issue of InformationWeek: The general public cloud and the steam engine have more in common than you may think. (Free registration required.)

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