OutFront

October 29, 2024 | Convene | Arlington, VA

Sonny Bhagowalia

Assistant Commissioner, Office of Information and Technology and Chief Information Officer

U. S. Customs and Border Protection

Mr. Bhagowalia has over 34 years of senior technical, managerial, and executive leadership experience in private industry, the U.S. Government, and state government. Mr. Bhagowalia has spent 20 of those years at the senior executive level in Federal and State Government in key support and leadership roles as a Program Management Executive/Assistant Director at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and CIO/CXO roles at the Bureau of Indian Affairs; U. S. Department of the Interior; General Services Administration, State of Hawaii, U. S. Department of Treasury and Deputy CIO at CBP, U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Prior to serving in the Government, Sonny served as a Chief Engineer/Manager in Industry at the Boeing Company for 14 years.

He has used his knowledge of enterprise IT/information resource management, cybersecurity, and business process re-engineering to transform and secure organizations, and has led/worked on such White House initiatives as open data, cloud, data center consolidation and FEDRAMP programs.

Mr. Bhagowalia has received numerous awards from the U.S. Government and Industry, including a Presidential Rank Award for Meritorious Executive Service; three Federal 100 Awards; and White House Champion of Change. His team won the Chief Information Officer 100 award for data.gov; and “Best of the Web” State Portal award from Center for Digital Government (CDG) for Hawaii.gov. He was inducted into the Boeing Technical Excellence Fellowship Program, recognizing the top one percent of engineers and scientists in the Boeing Company; the 2015 National Defense University Information Resources Management (IRM) College Hall of Fame; and 2014 Federal Enterprise Architecture Certification Institute Hall of Fame.

Mr. Bhagowalia has a Bachelor of Science Degree in Electrical Engineering (EE) and a Master of Science (MS) Degree in EE from Louisiana State University, and an MS in IRM from Syracuse University. He is also a twice-distinguished graduate from the National Defense University, with an IRM Diploma and Federal CIO Certificate.

Sonny Bhagowalia
Sonny Bhagowalia
Assistant Commissioner, Office of Information and Technology and Chief Information Officer
U. S. Customs and Border Protection