Department of Defense Officials Share Cloud Progress With Senate

Senators received updates on Wednesday regarding the Department of Defense’s progress on implementing cloud computing. Chief Information Officer John Sherman said at a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee’s cybersecurity subcommittee that Amazon Web Services, Google, Microsoft and Oracle are now offering enterprise cloud services to the DOD under the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability.

He noted that such capabilities will be available “at all three security classification levels” and from the tactical edge. Sherman, a 2023 Wash100 winner and upcoming keynote speaker at the Fourth Annual CIO Summit, added that enterprise cloud would facilitate Joint All-Domain Command and Control and the development of artificial intelligence and software modernization.

U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Robert Skinner, the director of the Defense Information Systems Agency and another 2023 Wash100 awardee, shared that accelerators have been set up to shorten cloud adoption times from 45 days “to within hours or minutes.” Skinner explained that moving to the cloud would enhance user experience and cybersecurity, the DOD website reported Wednesday.