GTSI appoints CIO

Robert Mitchell named to head GTSI's IT operations; SRA makes top appointments.

GTSI on Thursday announced the promotion of Robert Mitchell to chief information officer.

Mitchell joined GTSI in 2002 as senior director of strategic business analysis. In his new capacity, Mitchell reports to Tom Mutryn, GTSI’s senior vice president and chief financial officer. Mitchell succeeds Craig Ballam, who has left the company to pursue other interests.

Part of Mitchell’s charter involves building bridges between information technology and constituencies in departments throughout GTSI.

“In the past, the CIO or IT function was orientated around infrastructure” as an isolated corporate entity, he said. Mitchell, whose background includes both IT and strategic planning, said he aims to more closely integrate IT to GTSI’s business.

The overall mission is to turn IT into a competitive advantage, Mitchell added, also vice president of Information Advantage.

Mitchell is responsible for providing “basic stability and productivity” from the IT infrastructure standpoint. GTSI’s enterprise resource planning system implementation is one element of the IT foundation the company seeks to create. The deployment has encountered software bugs among other issues, but company officials maintain the worst is behind it.

Once stability and basic productivity improvement is achieved, the company can take bigger leaps toward obtaining competitive advantage via IT, Mitchell said.

In other personnel moves, SRA International this week announced executive appointments connected to two recent acquisitions: Touchstone Consulting Group and Galaxy Scientific.

SRA named three vice presidents as officers of SRA Touchstone Consulting Group, a unit with SRA that focuses on management consulting.

They are Stephen Lynott, vice president and director, Touchstone Consulting Group;Thomas Summerlin, vice president and director, consulting, Touchstone

Consulting Group; Elizabeth Bartholomew, vice president and director, operations, Touchstone Consulting Group.

Christopher McGoff, formerly Touchstone’s chief executive officer, is now vice president and director of SRA Strategic Consulting.

On the Galaxy side, Constantine Karmokolias, the former Galaxy chief operating officer, has been named vice president and director of Technology Solutions. He has been made responsible for transitioning Galaxy employees to SRA.

Other SRA appointments include: James Boyle III , vice president and director, Army Readiness Solutions; Michele Engelhart, vice president and director, Defense Business Development and Dennis Evans, vice president and director, Independent Verification and Validation Programs.

Also Ronald Gornto, vice president, Technology and Systems Integration; John McGrath, vice president and director, Aviation Safety and Homeland Security Technologies; John O’Connell, vice president, Advanced Data Links; Thomas Snyder, vice president and director, Tactical Communications Systems; and Robin Taber, vice president and director, Training and Performance Support Systems.