Thomas Bayer, the chief information officer (CIO), is leaving the SEC in October after a four-year tenure marked by “significantly reduced operation and maintenance costs,” say SEC officials.
For the moment, there is no immediate replacement for Bayer and it is not known what his next move will be, say sources familiar with the situation.
Bayer took over the SEC’s Office of Information Technology (OIT) in October 2010, responsible for application development, infrastructure operations and engineering, user support, program management, capital planning, information security, and enterprise architecture, officials say.
In particular, SEC officials say Bayer helped the SEC leverage cloud-based technologies, enhance security, standardize enterprise platforms, and “dramatically” cut the cost of IT systems while facilitating more public access to the regulator’s “more than 21 million corporate filings and other documents.”
The agency’s website “now delivers documents three times faster and requires fewer resources to manage even as traffic more than doubled in the past two years to 35 million requests per day,” officials say.
Among Bayer’s key initiatives were a “Working Smarter” program to improve “the efficiency and effectiveness of attorneys, accountants, analysts and other staff” via analytical systems, automated workflow and data visualization tools, SEC officials say. Bayer also led the technology development of the SEC’s Tips, Complaints and Referral (TCR) system and tools providing access to “billions of records” for SEC examiners, investigators, economists, analysts and other professionals.
Bayer also set up an IT Center of Excellence at the SEC to oversee emerging technology trends in capital markets and foster innovations to better serve investors, officials say. He also managed the implementation of an Enterprise Data Warehouse at the SEC to gather, store, and analyze 1,000 trillion bytes of data.
Bayer said in a prepared statement: “It has been incredibly rewarding to work with so many talented and dedicated professionals in an organization that values, encourages and supports innovation. I am both proud and humbled to have been a part of this exceptional agency and to support its vital mission.”
Before the SEC, Bayer was the CEO at Maris Technology Advisors, where he provided consulting services on technology strategy and program management to banking and financial services clients. His experience also includes posts as COO and chief technology officer at Brand Informatics, where he developed data collection, complex data analysis, and predictive data modeling for top financial services companies.
Bayer also worked for CapitalOne, Inteliguard Corp., and Citibank.
The SEC will be advertising for Bayer’s replacement via the Federal Register.
Need a Reprint?
Leave a Reply