Navy’s IT Consolidation Effort Has Saved $150M Since 2020 Launch, Official Says

The U.S. Navy has reportedly saved $150 million since it launched its Cattle Drive information technology consolidation effort in 2020.

According to a Navy memo, Cattle Drive is intended to accelerate the service’s modernization by phasing out obsolete, unproductive and unsecure IT systems and applications.

The Navy wastes billions of dollars in creating and maintaining duplicative IT infrastructure as well as creates unnecessary complexity that results in data siloes, the memo continues.

Michael Galbraith, the Navy’s chief digital innovation officer and a speaker at a past Potomac Officers Club event, said that Navy staffers have received excellence awards for their successful execution of Cattle Drive, FCW reported Tuesday.

The money saved through the program has been reinvested in the service’s human resources and finance portfolios, Galbraith said.

Tom Sasala, the Navy’s chief data officer and a speaker at a past POC event, said that another objective of Cattle Drive is to “assess all solutions for form and fit.”

He added that the program is currently focused on consolidating business and infrastructure systems. Cattle Drive will eventually target weapons systems and intelligence systems as well, Sasala told FCW. 

The challenge, according to Sasala, is tracing which systems pieces of data originate from and which systems merely hold copies. 

The Navy is also identifying which data sources have the highest quality in an effort to determine which systems are needed, according to Sasala. 

He added that the service plans to ramp up Cattle Drive through 2025 and free up even more resources for other modernization efforts.