Archivist of the United State David S. Ferriero recently announced the appointment of William J. Bosanko (“Jay”) as Chief Operating Officer for the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), effective January 1, 2013. Ferriero also named Pamela Wright as NARA’s first Chief Innovation Officer, effective December 2, 2012.

Mr. Bosanko’s appointment will follow the retirement from government service of the current Chief Operating Officer, Thomas E. Mills, on December 31, 2012.

Mr. Bosanko has been the National Archives’ Executive for Agency Services since 2011, a job that entails assessing records management needs of Federal agencies and representing the public interest in the accountability and transparency of their records. He also oversees many National Archives offices including the Office of the Chief Records Officer, the nationwide Federal Records Centers, the Office of Government Information Services, the Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO), and the National Declassification Center.

Prior to that appointment, he directed ISOO for three years, overseeing the government-wide security classification system and the National Industrial Security Program. He also served on the Presidential Task Force on Controlled Unclassified Information and served as the Executive Agent for oversight of that government-wide program.

Mr. Bosanko began his career with the National Archives in February of 1993, first as an Archives Technician, then as an Archivist, and later as a Management and Program Analyst, working with the Records Declassification Division, the Special Access and FOIA Staff, and ISOO. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science from Susquehanna University (Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania).

Ms. Wright will lead the agency in developing innovative ways to share the National Archives’ extensive holdings with the public. She plans to create a so-called “Innovation Hub” to develop and launch collaborative projects, raise public challenges, and form partnerships with the archival community, industry, and academic institutions.

Ms. Wright started at the National Archives in 2001 and has spent the past seven years promoting digital access and strategy. Prior to this appointment, she served as the agency’s first Chief Digital Access Strategist and launched many of the National Archives’ now robust social media platforms. She created a “Citizen Archivist Dashboard” to make National Archives records more accessible online by using crowdsourcing to tag, transcribe, and edit articles, as well as to upload and share scans or images of records. She also advanced the first agency tool for online internal communication – the Internal Collaboration Network (ICN).

Ms. Wright represents the National Archives on the White House Open Government Working Group. She has spearheaded several internal working groups and teams dedicated to advancing the “Open Government” goals of transparency, participation, and collaboration.

She began her career at the National Archives as a processing archivist. She holds Bachelor’s degrees in History and English

from the University of Montana, and earned a Master’s Certificate in Project Management from George Washington University