IT has suffered from taking a backseat to other service priorities, as officials valued security over utility and ended up years behind the private sector. “These are things that normally take weeks and months-in some cases, probably years to get done.”Īir Force IT frustrates Airmen to the point of being a retention issue. Hatcher, who oversees the Air Force’s $17 billion IT and cyber portfolio as acting deputy chief information officer. “This has really been done at a pace, speed, and scale that has not been seen before,” said A.G. That includes 60 percent of staff at the Pentagon in Virginia, and a significant portion of the Air Force’s approximately 685,000-person workforce. Shwedo, the Joint Staff’s chief information officer and its director for command, control, communications, computers, and cyber, said April 13. If they succeed, this urgent recognition of IT as a top priority could reverberate far into the future for a better connected, digitally savvy force.Īs many as 4 million DOD employees are now teleworking, Air Force Lt.

workforce adjusts to the new reality of working from home, the virus’s spread is forcing the IT that supports millions of military and civilian personnel to sink or swim.īuilding on incremental changes that were already in progress, Air Force officials are trying to turn what they call “20th-century IT for a 21st-century service” into an enterprise that keeps their air, cyber, and space missions going uninterrupted. The coronavirus pandemic has shocked global economies, sent nations into lockdown, and overwhelmed hospitals in some of the largest American cities. The Air Force’s information technology enterprise is facing an unprecedented test.

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