Pavan Pidugu 

The federal agency responsible for reducing crashes, injuries and fatalities involving large trucks, buses and other commercial vehicles had been relying for decades on outdated, unconnected IT systems. Soon after Pavan Pidugu joined the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration as its chief technology officer in 2020, he proposed an overhaul that has increased efficiency, improved roadway safety and saved lives.

“Pavan came in and literally, within days, put a roadmap on my desk on how to modernize the agency’s IT systems to be more efficient,” said Jim Mullen, the agency’s former acting administrator, now a consultant. “He came in and made improvements in a very short time period that are creating safer roads, improving transportation and reducing fatalities.”

Pidugu had to navigate initial skepticism about developing software in-house, but within six months, he revolutionized the agency’s technological infrastructure, improvements that will help make our roads safer and save millions in taxpayer dollars.

The motor carrier safety agency conducts more than 2 million commercial vehicle inspections annually. Pidugu led the development of an upgraded digital inspection platform that makes it easier and quicker for inspectors to collect data on commercial vehicles.

The new tool replaced eight legacy systems and is now used by more than 14,000 law enforcement officers across the country. With the new platform, inspection times were reduced by 40% to less than 25 minutes from 40 to 50 minutes.

Under Pidugu’s leadership, the agency also modernized medical certification processes by enabling examiners to electronically downgrade ineligible commercial motor vehicle drivers in near-real time, reducing months of administrative and legacy processes and saving motor carriers millions of dollars annually.

In addition, Pidugu oversaw the development of a simplified system that makes it easier for carriers and the industry to pay fees, register and request authorizations. The new system will simplify compliance and reduce processing times for additional registrations, attacking fraud that occurs when entities operate without registering with FMCSA or falsely use another motor carrier’s assigned registration number.

More recently, he helped oversee the implementation of new identity verification requirements for new applicants to the system that will help protect drivers’ data and further prevent fraud.

“I’ve been around the federal government a long time as a state employee, working in truck inspections, and I had seen very little upgrades to the software over 20 some years,” said Christopher Turner, a magistrate judge in Kansas. Pidugu “completely revolutionized it.”

Pidugu’s visionary leadership led to his becoming the Transportation Department’s chief information officer in February 2025.

He continues to strive to get inspectors, carriers and drivers in the field familiar with the FMCSA’s new technology to propel truck safety enforcement.

“I want to help our agency save lives by using new technologies in ways it never imagined,” he said.