Cindy Murphy, vice president of Intelligence Community Business Development for CACI, recently spoke with ExecutiveGov regarding the impact that the latest technology is having on CACI in order to drive the company’s digital transformation efforts to stay ahead of the intelligence community’s needs.
In addition, Murphy also discussed how digital solutions are improving network management and agility for the intelligence community as well as how diversity and inclusion play a significant role in CACI’s long-term success during the latest Executive Spotlight interview.
“Now as a leader at CACI, I am a member and active participant in our Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Board. I take personal accountability in ensuring that CACI provides an environment and culture that is inclusive. I have formally and informally mentored many young women throughout my career, and each time it has resulted in mutually beneficial and long-term relationships.”
You can read the full Executive Spotlight interview with Cindy Murphy below:
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ExecutiveGov: With the influence of emerging technologies impacting every aspect of business, how has your company been able to drive digital transformation efforts to stay ahead of need in the Intelligence Community?
Cindy Murphy: “At CACI our most valuable asset is our people. Driving digital transformation starts with talent. We embrace innovation through our intern and college hire programs; entry level talent has grown up digitally and offers fresh perspectives and experiences that allow us to rapidly innovate.
We partner new generations of technologists with our solution architects, customers, program execution organization, and growth teams to identify technology gaps and future mission needs. We collect, track, and share this meaningful and actionable information across our organization.
In addition to our formal training and certification offerings, we promote our culture of innovation via our subject matter expert-led technology forums like Communities of Practices (COP).
CACI has over 25 active COPs in both technical expertise and professional proficiencies. These organized, collaborative groups are a great way for our workforce to learn relevant topics, network with others, share trends and best practices, and advance their tradecraft. Advancing our workforce, ultimately helps advance our customers’ missions.
Another way we drive digital transformation efforts ahead of need in the Intelligence Community is by embedding analysts and mission engineers into our delivery teams to purposefully focus on mission outcomes.
Our mission engineers partner with end users, such as intelligence analysts to understand day-in-the-life scenarios and use cases. These multi-function teams ensure our customers’ highest priorities are met first and that tools are easy to use and meet mission requirements. This creative approach leverages the collective value of our team’s diverse backgrounds and skillsets and ultimately enables us to solve our customer’s challenges faster.
ExecutiveGov: As the need for digital solutions in the Intelligence Community continues to call for Agile, how does this improve its networks and data management?
Cindy Murphy: “I love this question because I am a complete ‘Agile nerd.’ As a software developer there is nothing more frustrating than developing a tool or capability without a feedback loop or insight into what features the analyst found useful, and those that need to be iteratively improved upon to make more mission impact.
My technical background includes partnering with intelligence customers to make the transition from waterfall to Agile and deliver capability to the end user faster, predictably, and reliably. At CACI, we’ve been doing that successfully for many years and have had fantastic results with our customers.
CACI is an industry leader in Agile transformations at scale. Our Agile Solution Factory, or ASF optimizes performance of Agile software, holistically integrating the benefits of Agile at an enterprise scale.
The results of CACI’s ASF on large government programs have included increased end-user satisfaction through higher quality and more secure software deployed on shorter release cycles.
Transparency and engagement are instrumental to Agile success. We measure and collect metrics across the entire Agile cycle which helps to improve the team’s productivity and provides our customers with deep insight into our performance.
We are applying the same Agile development techniques, including embedding analysts and mission engineers into our Agile scrum teams, to CACI’s new data analytics at scale platform called ‘Artemis.’
It provides a platform for rapid data discovery and visualization of massive amounts of data in one place. Artemis is a commercial-off-the-shelf tool developed for-the-Analyst, by-the-Analyst. It’s our commitment to developing capability with the analyst in mind. The result is an enhanced user interface and user experience that provides working capability to the analysts faster.”
ExecutiveGov: How does your company ensure long term success for your workforce to drive value for your employees as you continue to face the uphill challenge to recruit and retain the best talent in the federal marketplace?
Cindy Murphy: “The talent war is our new reality and recruiting and retaining top talent has become significantly more challenging since the COVID-19 pandemic. Our IC customers demand access to highly skilled and highly cleared talent. Today’s workforce demands flexibility, meaningful work, and competitive salaries and benefits.
CACI does very well with recruiting and retaining talent because of our mission-centric approach to everything we do. One of the best sources of talent is our Employee Referral Program.
There is value in our employees sharing their experiences at CACI with their networks. We provide employee referral bonuses, which motivates current employees to work with proven talent that they know and trust. It’s a win/win.
In addition to attracting new talent, today’s talent war requires a keen focus on retaining our current, highly-skilled and cleared workforce. #makingmoves is CACI’s enterprise-wide career development program.
At CACI we are proud to have a culture that promotes career mobility, helps our employees build invaluable skills and aligns our employee’s expertise to meet our customer’s evolving missions. Our #makingmoves program embraces and celebrates our employees desire to expand and grow within the company.”
ExecutiveGov: What role does diversity and inclusion play in CACI’s long-term success?
Cindy Murphy: “Diversity and inclusion (D&I) are very near and dear to my heart. I started as an intern supporting the intelligence community over two decades ago. I was a computer science and math major. As a young female intern in the STEM field supporting the IC, there weren’t a lot of people that had similar experiences and background as me.
Throughout my career, I am grateful to those who listened and encouraged me to learn, engage and contribute. Twenty years later, I’ve made it a priority to do the same.
Now as a leader at CACI, I am a member and active participant in our Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Board. I take personal accountability in ensuring that CACI provides an environment and culture that is inclusive. I have formally and informally mentored many young women throughout my career, and each time it has resulted in mutually beneficial and long-term relationships.
At CACI, we put D&I into action through our university partnerships, our internship programs, mentoring programs, and philanthropic partnerships, such as Women in Technology (WIT), Girls in Technology, and the Children’s Science Center. We also are committed to our Employee Resource Groups (ERGs).
The combination of these things helps our employees make connections, build a strong sense of community and grow bigger networks to create a diverse and inclusive culture.”