Air Force Financial Management developing new acquisition strategy as part of IT modernization push

The Air Force’s Business office of the Assistant Secretary for Fiscal Administration and Comptroller (FM) wishes to get absent from paying all the IT contract provider fees it currently pays to the Standard Services Administration. Jeanette Duncan, chief details officer for FM, explained it’s the following huge drive in the IT modernization tactic she’s been overseeing given that she took more than as CIO of the place of work.

“I’ve used the last, I want to say, four months — it feels almost certainly longer — accumulating the details points for exactly where we as an FM neighborhood are shelling out our dollars on it,” Duncan said during an Oct 29 AFCEA Luncheon. “My hope and target is to acquire an acquisition tactic and perform with [the Air Force District of Washington] to go ahead, to have a auto that it can leverage as just one group. But it will not be tomorrow, and it won’t be quickly, since almost nothing goes as fast as I ever want it to.”

Duncan reported her system has been taking part in out correctly so much although. It targeted on four core regions:

  1. Electronic transformation
  2. Techniques rationalization
  3. Modernizing enduring methods
  4. Supporting audit readiness

To complete these tasks, Duncan claimed FM is on the lookout at making use of simplified smart methods, to contain standardizing business enterprise tactics and applying robotic automation. In point, she claimed FM is now an Air Force Middle of Excellence for robotics and artificial intelligence.

A person area the place Duncan explained her business office has manufactured a large amount of development in the previous 12 months by implementing intelligent automation is on its knowledge strategy.

“We’ve finished a large amount with robotics. We’re operating on an AI capacity. But this was the region where we worked on an audit, and we experienced a great yr, we experienced projected our figures and the 12 months just before, when I 1st arrived on board, 80{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996} of our caps bought shut,” she said. “This 12 months, 87{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996} of all the IT caps shut for the Air Drive, 87{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996} of what was submitted was shut. We exceeded our objectives for submission by 151{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996}. Every single just one of the metrics that I experienced set for this year, we exceeded by everywhere from 15-to-233{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996}.”

Duncan also explained the office employed its first at any time chief facts officer.

One particular of the largest troubles Duncan said her place of work faces now is bettering its id manage and obtain administration (ICAM). In simple fact, she said “access controls, our segregation of duties and configuration administration, make up 83{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996} of the audit results for FM’s IT, and 59{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996} of that is ICAM.”

“So we’ve been participating with [the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Defense Information Systems Agency] on a pilot for their new stack to tackle ICAM,” she stated. “The Air Drive also has its own stack for the enterprise side of matters that it’s been shifting ahead with. The architecture will transform a tiny bit about the subsequent pair of yrs due to the fact they’re setting up with resources that they have or that they experienced made investments in, and then they are likely to evolve it to be far more federated and intertwined a small little bit much more with what OSD stack appears like. But this is where by we’re starting off.”

Duncan’s goal is to align with DoD’s total plans, which implies 33{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996} of units working with ICAM by the fourth quarter of FY 2023, and 50{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996} a single 12 months later on.

Duncan claimed her place of work is also in advance of a Authorities Accountability Place of work audit, which claimed it wanted a workforce review to determine irrespective of whether the capabilities and instruction of her staff matched the needs to increase on its targets. But Duncan stated she’d currently instituted just that type of review.

“We had already began earlier this calendar year, performing an evaluation as to what techniques do we want,” she explained. “So the subsequent phase in this procedure is likely to be seeking at the folks that we at present have on hand and indicating, ‘Okay, do we have all those gaps? Or do we have those people folks that have these abilities so we can plug them in? Or do we require to make some additional investments in schooling? Do we need to have to build and search for cross practical alternatives, where by we can deliver our men and women out to do this work with other people?’ So then they bring back again all those classes acquired and that knowledge back household to us. So that is ramping up.”

Minnie Arwood

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