CIT Notes Retirement of Dr. John F. "Jack" Jones, Jr., NIH CIO and Acting Director, CIT

Colleagues, friends, and family recently gathered in Wilson Hall, NIH Building 1, for a retirement reception in honor of Dr. John F. "Jack" Jones, Jr., NIH Chief Information Officer and Acting Director, NIH Center for Information Technology (CIT).

Picture: After his remarks, Lawrence A. (Larry) Tabak, Principal Deputy Director, NIH, presented John F. (Jack) Jones (left) with an NIH memento.

Moving on from NIH

After nine years of dedicated federal service to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Dr. Jack Jones is moving on to the next leg of his career journey. He has accepted a position in the private sector.

As an avid pilot in his spare time, Jack learned that pre-flight checks of all components are critical to staying whole among the clouds, and he applied this ethos to the applications and infrastructure that drive the NIH enterprise because he understood that it is the parts that create the whole.

He brought a wealth of technology management and science experience to the mission of NIH and successfully navigated working with several major stakeholders to improve NIH's governance, business processes, and collaborative environment. With Jack's guidance, NIH is recognized as a leader in the infrastructure that supports scientific collaboration.

Dr. Jones' career at NIH

Jack joined the National Institutes of Health (NIH), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as the NIH Chief IT Architect, where he led the development of the enterprise architecture (EA). His approach has been to implement an EA that is practical, can be used daily and not become 'shelfware'. As noted by Jack, his decision to come to NIH was based on several factors: an interest in IT governance and the desire to work with smart people in a diverse, collaborative research environment.

Jack assumed additional responsibility as acting Deputy Director for NIH's Center for Information Technology (CIT) in 2003 and was named Acting Director, CIT and Acting NIH CIO in 2005. He was appointed NIH CIO in 2008.

Matching IT to the needs of science and business at NIH

One of Jack's enduring goals is to ensure that information technology is matched to the business needs and processes that it supports. His efforts have brought together disparate communities, from physician-scientists to accountants and technologists, and the results include the development of business process and conceptual data models for grants award and management, and the acceptance of business process modeling as a required part of application development.

In addition to his focus on governance and business process, Jack has valued his interactions with the science of NIH – and in particular the contribution of his own people within CIT. Jack's essential message is that our teams of scientists, engineers and administrative support staff will continue to explore promising new technology options to support and enhance the ever-evolving requirements of our NIH mission.

CIT and NIH appreciate Jack's leadership and wish him well on the next leg of his journey.

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