Deputy Secretary of State Steps Up as Interim Head of the General Services Administration
In a recent email to GSA employees, Michael Rigas, the newly appointed acting head of the General Services Administration (GSA), has emphasized the importance of being good stewards of taxpayers' dollars and expressed his excitement about working together with the GSA team.
Rigas, who has held multiple positions at the GSA during the first Trump administration, including acting director of the Office of Personnel Management, acting federal chief information officer, acting deputy director for management at the Office of Management and Budget, and GSA senior advisor, is no stranger to the organization. He previously served as an associate GSA administrator during the George W. Bush administration, and as senior advisor and deputy administrator.
Rigas' new role as GSA's acting administrator was at the direction of President Donald Trump. However, details about his potential dual roles at the General Services Administration and the State Department remain unclear.
Under Rigas' leadership, the GSA is actively advancing identity security as a core element of its Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA) strategy. This initiative emphasizes continuous identity verification and reducing inherent trust at all infrastructure layers, aligning with Zero Trust principles and leveraging innovations such as mobile driver's licenses (mDLs) for digital identity proofing.
Key efforts under GSA related to identity security as part of Zero Trust include integrating mDLs as "the future of digital identity verification" to strengthen identity proofing, advancing Login.gov, the federal digital identity verification service managed by GSA, and participating in collaborative initiatives with NIST's National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE) to develop interoperability standards and practical use cases for digital identity credentials across federal and state systems.
The GSA is also promoting a dynamic, continuous trust model, linking Zero Trust Architecture with continuous Authority to Operate (cATO), where identity verification is continuously enforced and validated in real time rather than done via static checklists. This approach tightly integrates identity security controls into everyday operations, reducing reaccreditation burdens and improving responsiveness to threats.
As identity is seen as the new cybersecurity perimeter, agencies under GSA guidance are urged to adopt adaptive, integrated identity architectures that verify users and devices continuously, utilize identity governance and behavioral analytics, and respond to AI-driven threats dynamically. This shift enhances mission assurance and aligns identity investments with agency objectives.
Our platform has reached out to GSA for comment about the recent developments, but no comment has been made yet. Meanwhile, it's not immediately clear if Rigas will continue serving in both roles at the General Services Administration and the State Department.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has held up to four positions in the Trump administration, including leading the State Department, has not made any comments about these recent changes.
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- The recent email from Michael Rigas, the acting head of the General Services Administration (GSA), highlights the importance of policy-and-legislation and politics as he outlines his strategy for managing the GSA, focusing on being good stewards of taxpayers' dollars and working collaboratively with the GSA team.
- As the GSA advances its Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA) strategy, which includes efforts like integrating mobile driver's licenses (mDLs) for digital identity proofing, the organization is immersed in the realm of politics and policy-and-legislation, making general-news headlines.
