Matthew Donovan, acting secretary of the U.S. Air Force, told Federal News Network in an interview published Thursday that a new digital plan will provide the service branch a roadmap to change its culture and the way it operates.
“We’ve been very successful so far with the American military and the individual weapons platforms,†Donovan said. “The problem is these exquisite capabilities are largely unconnected from each other. We need to get to a point where we have a family of systems and everything is connected for command and control.â€
The Air Force’s digital strategy seeks to deploy an information technology infrastructure that is responsive to combat requirements, use data for artificial intelligence to accelerate the decision-making process for airmen and reform business practices to improve efficiency and effectiveness. Donovan said the service needs to invest in network modernization efforts to ensure security and speed up data processing.
“One of the challenges that we’ve had, since everything uses IT, is parsing it all out and figuring out where we are actually spending money on it,†he said. “What we are trying to do is centralize this and capture everything we need. But we do understand it’s going to take some upfront investment, but we are going to achieve some savings later.”