Longtime acquisition exec Kay Ely to retire
Ely plans to work on efforts to merge Office of Personnel Management back-office operations into the General Services Administration and then retire from federal service.
Kay Ely, a longtime federal acquisition executive and the IT acquisition policy lead at the General Services Administration, plans to retire from federal service, FCW has learned.
Ely, currently GSA's assistant commissioner of its Office of Information Technology Category (ITC) at the Federal Acquisition Service, will move to a task force set to merge some operations of Office of Personnel Management into GSA.
According to an Aug. 13 internal email, Ely will move onto the task force Oct. 1 for a 90-day detail. After that, she will retire from the federal government.
GSA officials said no replacement for Ely has been named.
The news comes two weeks after the announcement of Joanne Collins-Smee's departure. Smee, deputy commissioner of FAS, director of Technology Transformation Service and leader of the Centers of Excellence effort plans to leave the agency for a private sector job at the end of August.
Ely's No. 2, Bill Zielinski, deputy assistant commissioner for Category Management, could be a likely acting replacement, said one contractor familiar with the organization.
Ely's move isn't surprising, according to some federal contracting insiders, since the new task force is being headed by Mary Davie, FAS deputy commissioner. Ely and Davie worked closely together at FAS. Davie had been deputy assistant commissioner for FAS ITC for a dozen years before being named FAS deputy last September.
The White House plans to merge some of OPM's core functions -- retirement services, federal employee healthcare and insurance plans and its human resources solutions -- into GSA and rename the agency as the Government Services Agency.
Ely took up Davie's old position as assistant commissioner for the FAS ITC last September. Ely won Federal 100 honors in 2017 for her leadership on category management at GSA.