Roster change

Robert Frye, executive director of the Standard Systems Group (SSG) , announced recently that he would retire from civil service in September after more than 31 years in government.

Frye, who has served as executive director of the group since 1995, is responsible for the 2,400-person organization that acquires, develops and maintains combat support information systems for Air Force and Defense Department components. SSG is responsible for $14 billion in contracts and more than 100 programs.

As the chief operating officer for the Information Services Activity Group — composed of SSG at the Gunter Annex in Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala., and the Materiel Systems Group at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio — Frye is responsible for the financial and technical performance of that business area. The combined value of business of these organizations is more than $520 million.

Under Frye's leadership, SSG led the way toward the demonstration of the Air Force Web portal that was built in less than 60 days and a secret portal that was put together in 65 hours after Sept. 11.

Frye's leadership is also credited for SSG's earning the Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute's Capability Maturity Model Level 3 certification, held by less than 15 percent of developers worldwide and by less than 7 percent of government developers.

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Bryan O'Connor, a former NASA space shuttle program director, astronaut and Marine Corps test pilot, on June 3 will report to NASA headquarters as associate administrator for the Office of Safety and Mission Assurance.

O'Connor, 55, will be responsible for the oversight of all agency safety issues through the development and oversight of reliability, maintainability and quality assurance policies.

He replaces Fredrick Gregory, who has been leading the Office of Space Flight since December.

O'Connor was selected as an astronaut in May 1980 and is a veteran of two Space Shuttle missions. After the explosion of Challenger in 1986, he held a number of safety and management assignments over the next three years.

He left NASA in August 1991 to become commanding officer of the Marine Aviation Detachment at the Naval Air Test Center in Patuxent River, Md. After retiring from the Marine Corps, he returned to NASA headquarters as deputy associate administrator for the Office of Space Flight and space shuttle program director.

O'Connor left NASA in February 1996 to become an aerospace consultant. He rejoins NASA after serving as director of engineering at Futron Corp., a Washington, D.C.-based aerospace safety and risk-management consulting firm.

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Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta on May 2 announced the selection of four individuals to serve as federal security directors:

* At Washington Dulles International Airport: George Nacarra, a retired Coast Guard rear admiral and most recently the commander of the First Coast Guard District.

* At Louisville International Airport: Bruce Botman, who spent 20 years in the FBI, serving in such capacities as supervisory special agent and senior executive special agent.

* At Orlando International Airport: Charles Lutz, a 32-year veteran of the Drug Enforcement Administration. He coordinated drug law enforcement and intelligence programs in Southeast Asia and established DEA offices in Laos and Vietnam.

* At San Francisco International Airport: Edward Gomez, a retired California Highway Patrolman who has coordinated law enforcement resources during natural disasters and spent time working with the DEA and other police agencies throughout the state.

The federal security directors "will be the security field marshals at airports across the country," Mineta said. "These experienced professionals will be on the front lines in the war on terrorism."

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James Mahoney was sworn in last month as the assistant secretary of Commerce for oceans and atmosphere. Mahoney is a chief manager of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which serves the nation by forecasting U.S. weather and climate, monitoring and archiving ocean and atmospheric data, managing marine fisheries and mammals, and conducting cutting-edge oceanic, atmospheric and solar research.

Mahoney has served in many educational, public and private positions. He was president of the American Meteorological Society from 1990 to 1991, and he most recently served as president of Consulting and Ventures Group, which specializes in environmental consulting and hazardous waste remediation projects.

Mahoney, who has a doctorate in meteorology from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, co-founded Environmental Research and Technology Inc., an environmental management company that grew to become the nation's largest environmental firm by the end of the 1970s.

He began public service in 1988 as director of the National Acid Precipitation Assessment Program, a 10-year program created by the Energy Security Act of 1979 charged with recommending sound approaches to controlling acid rain effects, while providing for continued energy and economic security.