Roy E. Friend

Deputy Chief Information Officer

Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board

Roy Friend is Deputy Chief Information Officer for Operations at the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board, where he is responsible for IT operational support of the nation’s largest daily valued combined contribution plan with assets under management in excess of $230 billion and an annual IT support budget of $60 million.

Previously, Mr. Friend was at the Department of Commerce, where he managed one of six legislatively approved federal franchise fund activities. In this role he oversaw all fund activities supporting a government-wide fee-for-service administrative computing facility. Friend has held several IT management positions at Energy and Commerce, serving as Director for Infrastructure and Operations at the Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration (EIA), where he oversaw the policy and operations for all information technology infrastructure resources used in support of EIA’s legislative mandate to collect, analyze and report on the use and consumption of different energy products. He also served as Deputy Director of the Department of Commerce, Office of the Chief Information Officer’s data center, where he oversaw the day-to-day operations of the Commerce administrative data center.

Mr. Friend has received numerous awards for his advocacy of implementing strong network controls, IT resource facility best practices and business continuance strategies, most notably the Commerce Deputy Secretary Cutting Edge Award for his re-engineering and modernization efforts, and the Department of Commerce distinguished Silver and Bronze Medals for sustained exemplary support of departmental programs and Superior Federal Service for his leadership contributions in restoring operations following an emergency and crisis situation.