Executive Mosaic is pleased to announce Stacey Dixon, principal deputy director of national intelligence, as an inductee into the 2024 edition of the Wash100 Award, the most prestigious recognition in the government contracting industry, for her contributions to achieving information advantage across the intelligence community.
Vote for Dixon as your favorite GovCon leader as part of the 2024 Wash100 popular vote competition! Voting closes on April 30, so visit Wash100.com to cast your ten votes today.
“One of our most popular Wash100 winners, Stacey has amassed record-breaking votes and GovCon industry support across her five consecutive years of recognition. Additionally, her work at ODNI and within the broader intelligence community is leading our nation toward data centricity, AI readiness and interoperability as we face increasing strategic competition. We honor Stacey not only for her leadership and innovation, but for her commitment to advancing U.S. intelligence during this critical era,” said Jim Garrettson, CEO of Executive Mosaic and founder of the Wash100 Award.
Dixon has received the Wash100 award for five consecutive years now. This year’s award builds on her achievements over the past year and her leadership to ensure data security, transparency and availability for national security missions.
“It is an honor to be recognized by Executive Mosaic with the Wash100 Award, and any recognition of our work is a testament to the exceptional people from across the Intelligence Community who do so much to advance our unique 24/7/365 mission sets worldwide in support of our national security. As outlined in our National Intelligence Strategy, the Intelligence Community is steadfastly focused on accelerating innovation in everything we do and strengthening our partnerships with non-state entities, including private industry, to address the increasingly complex and interconnected threat landscape,” said Dixon.
Dixon has held various leadership roles across the intelligence community throughout her more than two-decade career. She joined the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in August 2021 after serving as the deputy director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, where she helped oversee agency operations and the National System for Geospatial Intelligence. Before that, she was director of the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity and deputy director of IARPA from 2016 to 2018.
Among her priorities over the past year was developing a framework to reform the personnel vetting process, known as Trusted Workforce 2.0, to introduce a risk-based model that utilizes modern information technology and resources, reduces complexity in the process and removes repetitive and duplicative checks.
“We revised the investigative standards and issued new performance management standards with measures and metrics to ensure that activities and services meet desired outcomes,” Dixon said before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
“Industry has advocated for the elimination of periodic reinvestigations, reciprocal treatment of clearances, a single uniform policy structure, and a reengineered approach to personnel vetting processes,” she added.
Dixon also advocates for data transparency and interoperability throughout the government to enable decision-makers, policymakers and leaders to better understand the importance of intelligence in achieving mission objectives.
In July, the ODNI issued a two-year roadmap for its data strategy outlining focus areas and lines of efforts for the 18 intelligence community entities to boost the interoperability, discoverability and sharing with national security partners and ensure artificial intelligence readiness of data across the IC.
“We need to develop end-to-end data management plans with intentional and deliberate action from the point of collection and acquisition of data to exploitation and dissemination. The IC Data Strategy drives deliberate planning to accelerate the delivery of relevant data to those that need it, when they need it, both now and in the future,” Dixon said.
Dixon shared at an Intelligence and National Security Alliance discussion that the IC has been utilizing AI in some automation programs but it needs to reimagine itself as an organization driven by both data and intelligence.
According to Dixon, the ODNI will implement AI “incrementally” and “in a smart way” to build trust between the government and industrial base partners.
In her keynote speech at the Potomac Officers Club’s 9th Annual Intel Summit, Dixon said AI systems are instrumental in harnessing the power of data.
“This ability to better manage our data, process our data, use it, prepare it for using artificial intelligence, machine learning and other tools — all of this will help us to discover, access and leverage IC data at the speed and scale, frankly, that’s required by the mission,” she said.
Dixon also highlighted the impact of great power competition on the global intelligence landscape, citing the strategic competition with China and Russia as a key challenge affecting mission-critical operations worldwide.
“This challenge impacts almost everything in every domain — in space, air, sea, land, as well as cyber. It goes beyond military, intelligence and diplomatic affairs. It includes economic and business relationships, how information is reported, retained and used, and how we interact with one another, even on a person-to-person basis,” Dixon said.
Executive Mosaics congratulates Dixon and the entire ODNI team for their selection in the 2024 Wash100 Award.
Don’t forget to vote for Dixon at Wash100.com.
