The Office of the Chief Information Officer is focused on driving value in all information technology investments across the Department of the Air Force and improving portfolio management.
Cecily Odom, Enterprise IT Programming & Financial Management senior advisor, is leading the effort.
In her role, Odom focuses on a wide range of financial management tasks including the development and justification of the Enterprise IT budget estimate submission, oversees the resourcing activities of the Enterprise IT portfolio with the Strategy, Planning, Programming, Budgeting and Execution system, and establish a metrics and analysis system for Enterprise IT resourcing.
"I'm excited to build our efforts toward helping others understand the value in IT spending across the Air Force and Space Force," Odom said. "Our Airmen and Guardians deserve to know that we're focusing on the capabilities they need to be effective. And just as importantly, American taxpayers ought to have confidence that we're spending their tax dollars efficiently and effectively. We are committed to uncovering hidden IT costs so we can get after the things seen as wasteful and illegal."
This is another step toward providing transparency and insight to the Department's IT spending, identifying and reducing technical debt, and better measuring the effectiveness and performance of IT investments across the Air Force and Space Force.
"Leaders ask me all the time, 'Do you have enough money to provide the IT capabilities we need?' I think we do, but we need to make sure we're spending that money in the right way and make sure our investments are producing the capabilities we need," said Venice Goodwine, Department of the Air Force chief information officer.
"Some estimates show that across the entire Department, our organizations spend roughly $10 billion per year on IT services, but my office currently only has visibility on a quarter of that spend, or just over $2 billion. We don't need to control those funds, but we need robust governance to make sure the money is spent in a way that is best for the enterprise, and we aren't reproducing capabilities that already exist," Goodwine added.
Goodwine said her team is focused on ensuring IT stakeholders from across the Air Force and Space Force leverages governance processes to articulate their priorities. This includes making sure that they also know how to access existing Service Catalogues, which provide a detailed list of capabilities developed jointly by government and industry that commands can leverage or modify to support their needs.
"My office works with the Air Force A6 and the Space Force S6 to prioritize and make investments in IT capabilities of common concern for all Airmen and Guardians," Goodwine said. "We leverage the Cyberspace Capabilities Center to develop and deliver these services, like how the Defense Information Systems Agency does the same across the Department of Defense for all users on behalf of the DoD CIO."
As part of the Secretariat, the role of the CIO's staff is to provide strategy, policy, governance, oversight and advocacy across the Department's IT enterprise - inclusive of all IT portfolios and mission areas, cybersecurity, data and artificial intelligence - and make informed investments to support the Services' strategic objectives.
