DOD CIOs Vow to Address Employee Complaints About Outdated Computers

The Department of Defense’s chief information officers have pledged to address complaints regarding the outdated computer hardware used by its employees.

In a LinkedIn post, the Office of the DOD Chief Information Officer acknowledged the need to improve employees’ user experience with their hardware and enable modern office features.

The goal is to provide DOD service members, civilians and contractors best-in-class systems that both perform well and are secure, the DOD CIO office said.

The note was jointly signed by DOD CIO John Sherman, a speaker at an upcoming Potomac Officers Club event; Kelly Fletcher, acting principal deputy CIO in Sherman’s office; Air Force CIO Lauren Knausenberger; Army CIO Raj Iyer; and Navy CIO Aaron Weiss. Knausenberger and Weiss were speakers at past POC events.

They released the statement days after Michael Kanaan, director of operations for the U.S. Air Force-Massachusetts Institute of Technology Artificial Intelligence Accelerator program, wrote an open letter to the DOD regarding the state of its basic information technology functions. In the letter, which was posted on LinkedIn, Kanaan complained about how computer equipment failure resulted in thousands of lost employee hours in the previous year. As of publication time, his open letter had garnered more than 2,400 reactions and 375 comments.

Kanaan listed issues such as long log-in times and cybersecurity software that eats up system resources, ending each complaint with a call to “fix our computers.”

In their response letter, the DOD CIOs said they are already taking steps to improve the telework capabilities of government equipment, provide employees with better-performing laptops and improve system performance by eliminating redundant cybersecurity scans.

The CIOs said that they value the feedback and that they can sympathize with the community’s grievances. “Believe it or not, we remember what it was like before we were CIOs and on the user end of things,” they added.