The General Services Administration (GSA) Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) has named Pete Waterman as the new program administrator.
Monday was Waterman’s first day on the job. He joined FedRAMP after leaving the General Services Administration’s Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) in February, where he served as a senior technical advisor.
“Pete joins GSA from an extensive background as an implementer and leader across technology roles in the public and private sectors, including a not-so-distant stint here at GSA supporting the Technology Modernization Fund,” Eric Mill, GSA’s executive director of cloud security, wrote in an email to employees obtained by MeriTalk.
“Pete is in a great position to build on the direction and momentum the FedRAMP team has enjoyed this year, establish key relationships across the program’s executive branch, and move FedRAMP into its next iteration,” said Mill.
Waterman takes over as director after Brian Conrad, the former acting director of FedRAMP, resigned in March. Waterman is the program’s first permanent director since Ashley Mahan, who left the position in January 2021.
FedRAMP aims to provide a unified government approach to the security assessment, authorization, and ongoing monitoring of cloud products and services used by federal agencies.
The program has undergone significant changes this year, with a new roadmap released in March detailing how FedRAMP will evolve in 2024 and 2025.
Last month, the White House Office of Management and Budget released long-awaited guidance to overhaul FedRAMP, replacing the policy created for the program when it began in 2011. The guidance aims to reduce pain points and strengthen FedRAMP’s role as a cornerstone of federal cloud security.
“This program has gained tremendous momentum over the past year, and I am thrilled to join this team as we look to a future where civil servants have broader access to secure cloud services,” Waterman said in a LinkedIn post on Aug. 26 announcing his new role.
Prior to joining TMF, Waterman served as a staff engineer and digital services expert at the US Digital Service for over three years.
Previously, he spent over 20 years working in the private sector in a variety of roles focused on machine learning, private cloud, security, data analytics, and more.
In addition to Waterman’s new role, Mill also said that FedRAMP’s second U.S. Digital Fellow started work Monday, “as well as the first of a handful of key technical hires (with more to come) who will shape FedRAMP into a more technology-forward program that will be in a great position to collaborate and integrate with the work of many of you across (Technology Transformation Services).”
