Leonel Garciga, director of information management, HQDA-DCS-G2 at the U.S. Army, served as a keynote speaker for Potomac Officers Club during its ‘Weaponizing Data Across the Digital Battlefield’ Virtual Event on August 11th.
If you missed the event, you can still register to watch the footage in Potomac Officers Club’s Event Archive.
Following the joint-opening keynote address from Maj. Gen. Peter Gallagher and Brig. Gen. Rob Collins, the event’s moderator Michael Davenport, senior vice president with Booz Allen Hamilton, introduced Garciga.
“Mr. Garciga has been a valuable asset of the Department of Defense (DoD) and has been recognized for prestigious awards such as the DoD CIO award and the secretary of defense metal for global war on terrorism,” Davenport stated.
Garciga began his address by exploring the Army’s modernization efforts from a CIO lens. He explained that the service branch will focus on when moving toward a modernized warfare, including flexibility, agility and scalability at an enterprise and tactical level. Enterprise reform, cloud and data also must be integrated into the ecosystem within these topics.
“We need to be facilitators to deliver capability as opposed to the bad guys at the end of the process. A large part of doing so is retraining our workforce to be integrated upfront. However, there are enterprise updates that need to happen prior to reaching this goal,” Garciga said.
Part of this process is to enable the Army to abide by an enterprise APO and the inheritance model. The enterprise APO will provide a foundation for agencies, which has allowed the enterprise to take over 80 percent of the security challenges that capabilities have as they come onto the network.
Garciga’s unit has worked to adhere and rollout policy to provide full records of reciprocity. The efforts have shortened the development and integration of modern features and streamlined the application process to enable the Army to solve larger challenges within the enterprise.
The Army is also training its workforce to leverage new tools, process accreditation and understand the risk posture of systems. Garciga noted that his unit will investigate how to move toward reciprocity to service for the future.
“From a capability development perspective, our ability to share and get these systems accredited on the network faster will enable us to leverage the technology provided to us by the department,” Garciga said. “The other piece is to look at how we slim down cybersecurity and integration.”
He went on to explain that DevSecOps is about culture and process, and the Army has to determine how to integrate that into the beginning of the modernization process, which will allow systems to be accredited while in the S&T chain to prepare them for production.
In addition, the Army has begun its transition to cloud as a way to unify the agencies’ fabrics and onboard customers to top secret cloud. Garciga added that the Army will look towards industry to “bring the TTPs to the table” and advance the cloud integration process.
“Help us, help you. Help us take risks. Look at technologies that are generally high risk procedures in the Army and DoD and show us how to do that more effectively, including cloud onboarding,” Garciga added.
Data movement has been a primary focus within the Army’s Intel division. The Army’s priority of data is to integrate the Intelligence Community’s (IC) data fabric to ensure secure support of the mission command. The Army is also looking within the tactical data fabric to expand the process and to speed up enterprise and enhance network deployment.
Garciga stated that data security is also a top priority to understand how to secure data at rest and how to bring that data to the enterprise at both the tactical and cloud levels.
“These are the key critical reforms we have worked on in order to move to DevSecOps. Without understanding your data from a technology perspective and operationalizing it, you won’t be able to enact artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML),” Garciga concluded.
To hear more from Garciga, click here to view the event in Potomac Officers Club’s Event Archive.
Mark your calendars for Potomac Officers Club’s 5th Annual Army Forum on August 27th. Bruce Jette, assistant secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics, and Technology (ASA(ALT)) and 2020 Wash100 Award recipient, will serve as the keynote speaker at the forum.
During the 5th Annual Army Forum, Jette will discuss the progress, innovations and accomplishments of the Army’s modernization renaissance over the last year, what challenges remain, and how industry can help in 2021 and beyond.
Register here to join Potomac Officers Club for the 5th Annual Army Forum on Thursday, Aug. 27th to learn more about the latest initiatives and modernization plans for the U.S. Army.
