More Air Force Teleworkers Approve of IT Services, Deputy CIO Says

Lauren Knausenberger, the Air Force’s deputy chief information officer, said there were more service personnel working from home who approved of their IT services than those who mostly work on site. 

During a keynote presentation at AFCEA NOVA's Air and Space Force IT Day held on Dec. 15, Knausenberger noted that based on the organization’s internal survey of personnel satisfaction, almost two-thirds, or 61 percent, of the teleworkers said they were satisfied with the IT service they received compared to 27 percent of workers who were on the base, FCW reported Tuesday.

“Because you're at home, you've got a great commercial connection, there are no funky configurations going on on your base that's different from the next base,” she said. “What we're working on now is really instrumenting so we can see exactly what [those problems are] on each base so we can focus our effort and our spend.”

Knausenberger, a past Potomac Officers Club event speaker, added that the service is collaborating with the Defense Information Systems Agency to identify any redundancies and areas that can be delegated to DISA.

Consisting of over 7K civilians and active military employees, DISA has been operating as the next IT service provider for the Department of Defense’s administrative Fourth Estate agencies. 

According to the FCW report, the number of remote workers has been going down as more employees return to working on bases. However, Knausenberger expects the trend to reverse in the next few months. 

The service nonetheless intends to improve the on-base numbers, which means looking at new solutions, with virtual private networks, laptops and a fast connection as the foundation, according to  Knausenberger. 

"We have a lot to get after on the base side," she said. "We should be open to using commercial internet and a VPN. We should be open to using commercial internet and some more of the zero trust technologies that we're adopting now."