EPA's Carter Farmer is the White House pick for federal CIO, sources say
He replaces Greg Barbaccia, who returned to Palantir in August, and has argued that most agency problems do not need AI.
Carter Farmer, chief information officer of the US Environmental Protection Agency, is the White House's choice for federal CIO, according to several sources familiar with the matter, FedScoop reported. The Office of Management and Budget did not immediately comment.
Farmer would replace Greg Barbaccia, who left government and returned to Palantir at the end of August. "I've always enjoyed working with Carter, and I think he's a great fit for the role," Barbaccia said.
Already on the modernisation board
Farmer was added to the Technology Modernization Fund Board as a voting member last month, a seat the federal CIO holds permanently. The EPA advertised its own CIO post on Monday. He has been at the agency since May 2025 and previously worked at the US Institute of Peace.
Guardrails and reuse
At the EPA he has run AI pilots in which experts review the outputs. "If you don't give people the tools they need, you risk them going outside the bounds of what is available," he said in June, adding that the agency keeps "very strict guardrails" on internal AI tools.
He has also urged agencies to reuse work rather than reinvent it. "Anything you're probably trying to solve in your agency has probably already been solved 10 to 20 thousand times everywhere else in the world," he said. Last year he warned that "many times, the solution or the problem you're trying to solve doesn't need AI."
That is a useful instinct for the post. The federal CIO sets direction for agencies that are under pressure to adopt AI quickly with fewer staff, and a leader who starts by asking whether a problem needs AI at all, and whether another agency has solved it, can save both money and mistakes.
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