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Dunkin broke down longstanding barriers as Energy’s CIO

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4 months ago

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When Ann Dunkin became the Energy Department’s chief information officer back in 2021, she got a call from one of her predecessors. Dunkin said that person told her Energy’s unofficial motto was “you’re not the boss of me.”

Nearly four years later, Energy’s long-time narrative has changed.

Ann Dunkin is the former CIO at the Energy Department.

“The environment that you go into at Energy is you’ve got semi-autonomous and autonomous organizations and all have different relationships with headquarters. So when I arrived, everyone kept asking me what my plan was and what I wanted to accomplish? I kept saying, essentially, I didn’t know, because you have all these independent organizations that are explaining to you exactly why they don’t have to do what you tell them,” Dunkin said during an “exit” interview on Ask the CIO. “I wouldn’t go so far as to say we got rid of separate email addresses or sub domains, or we got rid of different development environments, but what we did do was build collaboration in that space. For example, we had 57-58 tenants from Office 365. Now we’ve got 55 tenants. We’re down a few because we got rid of a couple.”

Through that effort, Dunkin said Energy signed an enterprise software deal with Microsoft so at least every lab and office has a vehicle with a common set of terms and conditions.

“That got really, really hairy due to some delays at the General Services Administration and some delays in our contracting shop; we were down to the last day, literally, to get that contract done. We had some folks who were ready to pull out of that contract, go do their own thing, and we held them together, and everybody is under the same contract,” she said. “We are saving 19% across DoE, which doesn’t sound like a lot of money, until you realize that’s a couple hundred million dollars over five years.”

To achieve these goals, Dunkin said first her team had to listen to what the challenges of the labs and offices were, and then second had to create trust and confidence that they would provide the service as well or better than the organizations could do it for themselves.

“We had some folks say, ‘take our email, take our infrastructure at some level.’ For example, my office was taking over a lot of the infrastructure at the [National Nuclear Security Administration] site offices. We took over some of the unclassified operations, which was a part of building that trust and confidence,” she said. “I will not tell you that every single person in DoE came to the table and said, ‘Let’s go do stuff together.’ But enough of them came that we built a pretty good coalition of the willing to do things, and really were able to strengthen those relationships, not just among the federal folks, but actually even more so with the labs, plants and sites with contractor organizations.”

Common tools, common structure

Another piece to breaking down the barriers to create collaboration across Energy was developing common tools. Dunkin said Energy didn’t have a strong low-code, no-code development capability when she arrived in 2021, but soon created one, first to help with COVID vaccination attestations and then later to help the IRS implement certain provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act.

“They got to the point where other departments were looking at us and saying, ‘we’d rather you do it than us if we’re going to work together.’ So that was a great example of how we really moved the needle in terms of our capabilities,” she said. “We also just created a lot more structure around how we did the work, having a really clear intake process, having a change control committee, having a prioritization process for new projects so that we could make sure that we could deliver those things we said we were going to do because we had the right resources. Across the entire organization, everyone was working on the same things.”

While most of the low-code, no-code development is done by vendors, Dunkin said she ensured federal employees had the right skillsets to manage those projects.

She said before she left Energy every part of the CIO’s team improved, from the operations team to the security team to the development team.

Aligning funding with security needs

Dunkin specifically called out the improvements around cybersecurity in securing more than just the headquarters infrastructure, but in managing security across the entire agency.

“Everybody had their own security activities, but our security operations center (SOC) was responsible for understanding where everybody was communicating with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, sharing out with the organization and making sure that not only was the strategy across the organization moving forward, but the day-to-day operations were going well,” she said. “One of the great things that we did in terms of collaboration was when we stood up the program management office (PMO), which I don’t want to give a lot of shout outs, but I’ll give this one to Amy Hamilton, who led that PMO, to really organize our work across DoE. One of the cool things they did was that we set it up so that we had a little bit of money, but we got money, like many agencies did after the SolarWinds incident, and managed to make that recurring funding for security improvements. Instead of keeping that in the office of the CIO in a given year, half to two-thirds of it went out to the rest of the organization. We’d say, here’s some money for your project, and then you have to write a paper, do a brown bag or do something to tell everybody exactly what you did so that they can go do that too. That was a great way to really leverage that funding, and we aligned it to critical needs across the organization each year.”

Now that she’s out of government, for a second time — Dunkin also served as the CIO at the Environmental Protection Agency during the Obama administration — she plans to work part-time Georgia Tech University as a distinguished professor of the practice and a distinguished external fellow across the School of Public Policy and the School of Cybersecurity and Privacy.

She also is serving on some advisory boards and doing some advising for people. Dunkin also plans to write a book.

The post Dunkin broke down longstanding barriers as Energy’s CIO first appeared on Federal News Network.

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Politics

Black Lives Matter Activist in Boston Pleads Guilty to Federal Fraud Charges – Scammed Donors to Fund Her Lifestyle

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18 hours ago

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September 24, 2025

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Screencap of YouTube video.

A Black Lives Matter activist in Boston named Monica Cannon-Grant pleaded guilty to federal charges this week, admitting that she scammed donors and used their money to fund her own lavish lifestyle.

Cannon-Grant was previously held up as an admired figure. The city of Boston named her the Bostonian of the year at one point for her ‘social justice activism’ and she was even recognized by the Boston Celtics basketball team for her efforts.

She is now facing a minimum of two years in prison.

The New York Post reports:

BLM-linked activist admits conning donors to fund her lavish lifestyle

A once-celebrated Boston social activist has pleaded guilty to defrauding donors — including Black Lives Matter — out of thousands of dollars that she used as a personal piggy bank.

Monica Cannon-Grant, 44, pleaded guilty Monday to 18 counts of fraud-related crimes that she committed with her late husband while operating their Violence in Boston (VIB) activists group, according to the US Attorney’s Office in Massachusetts.

The activist scammed money — including $3,000 from a BLM group — while claiming it was to help feed children and run protests like one in 2020 over the murder of George Floyd and police violence.

Cannon-Grant also conned her way into getting $100,000 in federal pandemic-related unemployment benefits — which she used to pay off her personal auto loan and car insurance policy.

But she has now confessed to transferring funds to personal bank accounts to pay for rent, shopping sprees, delivery meals, visits to a nail salon — and even a summer vacation to Maryland.

Just amazing.

Here’s a local video report:

She should pay back every penny.

The post Black Lives Matter Activist in Boston Pleads Guilty to Federal Fraud Charges – Scammed Donors to Fund Her Lifestyle appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

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Keith Olbermann Backpedals Furiously With Apology for Threatening CNN’s Scott Jennings – Jennings Responds (VIDEO)

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18 hours ago

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September 24, 2025

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As the Gateway Pundit reported yesterday, former MSNBC host and generally unhinged leftist Keith Olbermann, appeared to threaten CNN’s conservative pundit Scott Jennings on Twitter saying, ‘You’re next motherf**ker.’

Well, Olbermann may have gotten a phone call or a visit from the FBI because today he walked back those comments with a full-throated apology.

RedState has an update:

To quickly recap, Scott Jennings, a Salem Media Network radio host and conservative CNN political commentator, reacted to breaking news on Monday that Kimmel had been reinstated by tweeting, “So basically his employer suspended him for being an insensitive pr**k, and we don’t live in an authoritarian regime? Got it.”

This enraged Olbermann, who proceeded to tweet what many, including Jennings, perceived to be a threat. “You’re next, motherf**ker. But keep mugging to the camera.” Jennings tagged Patel and included a screengrab of the tweets in response.

Though the FBI hasn’t commented as to whether an investigation was launched, Olbermann ostensibly appears to have thought twice about what he tweeted and deleted, apologizing profusely in tweets posted on Tuesday and claiming what he wrote was “misinterpreted”:

See Olbermann’s tweet below:

Scott Jennings, always a class act, offered this hilarious response:

Keith Olbermann really needs help. The guy is just so out of control.

The post Keith Olbermann Backpedals Furiously With Apology for Threatening CNN’s Scott Jennings – Jennings Responds (VIDEO) appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

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Politics

Where is Lance Twiggs? Kirk Assassin’s Transgender Lover Has Vanished

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18 hours ago

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September 24, 2025

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Charlie Kirk assassin Tyler Robinson and roommate Lance Twiggs

Charlie Kirk assassin Tyler Robinson lived with his transgender partner – a male-to-female trans named Lance “Luna” Twiggs.

The FBI used Robinson’s texts with his transgender partner to solidify that Robinson was the assassin. Lance Twiggs has not been charged with any crime; however, federal authorities are still investigating.

Last week, Utah authorities released the text exchange between Tyler Robinson and his transgender lover, Lance Twiggs, sent shortly after Kirk’s assassination.

Utah County District Attorney Jeff Gray announced seven charges against Charlie Kirk assassin Tyler Robinson. They will also be seeking the death penalty.

Robinson was charged with:

– Count 1: Aggravated murder (capital offense)
– Count 2: Felony reckless discharge of a firearm causing bodily injury
– Count 3: Felony obstruction of justice for hiding the firearm
– Count 4: Felony obstruction of justice for discarding the clothing he wore during the shooting
– Count 5: Witness tampering for asking roommate to delete incriminating messages
– Count 6: Witness temperating for demanding trans roommate stay silent, and not speak to police
– Count 7: Commission of a violent offense in the presence of a child

Jeff Gray released the chilling texts between Tyler Robinson and his “love” Lance Twiggs.

Read the text exchange here:

Tyler Robinson texts with transgender lover Lance Twiggs / 1
Kirk assassin Tyler Robinson texts with transgender lover Lance Twiggs / 2

Lance Twiggs was reportedly cooperating with the FBI, however, according to the Daily Mail he has seemingly vanished.

“If [Lance Twiggs] ever comes back, it will be in a body bag,” a neighbor said to the Daily Mail. “That’s not a threat – I’m just saying that there are so many people who want a piece of him he’d be mad to show his face in public again. This was a generational event.”

The Daily Mail reported:

The Trans boyfriend of Charlie Kirk’s alleged assassin has fled their former lovenest – and locals tell the Daily Mail they never want to see him again.

Lance Twiggs, 22, was led away for questioning when police swooped on the smart three-bed condo he shared with accused gunman Tyler Robinson, 22.

Shaken neighbors say the part time plumber has not been back to the $320,000 property in St. George, Utah – one declaring: ‘Good riddance. I never want to see either of them again.’

His beaten-up Infinity compact is still parked in his space with his work gear tossed across the back seat and a sandwich wrapper and a drink on the front passenger seat.

Upstairs lights have been left on for more than a week and notes and Amazon packages are piling up outside the home owned by Twiggs’s devout Mormon family.

The post Where is Lance Twiggs? Kirk Assassin’s Transgender Lover Has Vanished appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

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