President Donald Trump has nominated Ryan Cote to serve as the Department of Veterans Affairs’ new chief information officer and assistant secretary for information and technology, a move that could potentially bring a seasoned IT professional back into federal service.
The White House announced Cote’s selection as part of a group of more than two dozen nominations sent to the Senate on Tuesday. The combined CIO and assistant secretary for information and technology role requires Senate confirmation.
Cote previously served as the Department of Transportation’s CIO during the first Trump administration for two years, after spending more than three decades serving in IT and CIO positions across the private sector. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Cote worked with DOT’s cloud and tech providers so that the agency’s 70,000 full-time employees could securely and effectively use an outwardly-focused network as part of their virtual work environment.
Prior to his work in the private sector — which included stints as an information systems manager with HP, a senior consultant with IBM and CIO executive partner at Gartner, among other roles — Cote served in the U.S. Marines for four years.
If confirmed, Cote would fill the dual-hatted position previously held by Kurt DelBene at VA. DelBene departed VA in January 2025 after prioritizing digital transformation initiatives across the agency during his tenure.
VA is in the process of moving forward with a number of major IT modernization initiatives that have been hobbled by delays and cost overruns, which Cote would be largely responsible for overseeing.
This includes an ongoing push to consolidate GI Bill benefits into a single digital platform, which the department initially hoped to complete by April 2024. A group of bipartisan lawmakers also introduced legislation last month seeking to enable veterans to receive electronic correspondence about their GI Bill education benefits that builds upon the Digital GI Bill project.
Cote will also have to address cybersecurity efforts across VA amid a governmentwide push to cut spending and employees, which has already affected the agency’s digital security initiatives. DelBene also warned during a House hearing last December that VA’s cyber-related budget constraints have resulted in the department only having 360 information security officers to secure data across its systems, noting at the time that an agency of VA’s size would typically need 600-plus ISOs.
Although Trump’s proposed fiscal year 2026 budget for VA is $441.3 billion — which the White House noted is “a $42.2 billion (+10%) increase above the 2025 enacted level” — it would reduce the agency’s IT budget by $493 million compared to FY25.
