Women in NOVA Roundtable

In July, Women in NOVA held their quarterly meeting. More than 50 attendees talked more in-depth about the topics they covered this year including the cloud, human resources transformation and financial accountability. The roundtable of experts featured Lt. Col. Samantha Haberlach, USAF, chief, System Planning and Integration Division, Plans and Integration Directorate, Headquarters United States Air Force; John Koski, Jr., director of information systems and technology, Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Financial Operations; Johanna Curry, project officer for the U.S. Army's application migration; and Susan Shuryn, cloud computing lead in the office of the Department of the Navy Chief Information Officer. After networking, experts engaged in 15-minute open discussions with small groups. During the discussions Curry clarified the importance of the Army Cloud Computing Enterprise Transformation (ACCENT) program and noted that all ordering on ACCENT will be through computer hardware enterprise software and solutions (CHESS). The Army released several requests for information (RFIs) on ACCENT with a focus on education of the program. The chief of naval operations recently directed a cloud-first strategy, a step in which Shuryn stressed that the greatest challenge is education and change management. Both services believe most of the systems are Impact Level 4 (IL4), with some IL2 systems that are public facing. Col. Haberlach's discussion centered on human resources transformation and the way forward. She noted that the Air Force faces significant challenges in recruiting and retention. The service is actively focused on modernizing the business processes and related systems. In light of this, she asked industry to assist with cybersecurity checks, reporting and agile development. During Koski's discussion, he recognized the Air Force's awareness of cybersecurity and the requirement to collect, analyze and consolidate financial data from 83 systems and turn it into useful information. He discussed financial improvement and audit readiness (FIAR) compliance strategy for audit and business systems in the Air Force's financial management portfolio, including the Defense Enterprise Accounting and Management Systems (DEAMS). The major challenges for the Air Force are interfaces, legacy system data integrity and change management. When it comes to how industry can help, the panelist concurred that they all need industry tools. The attendees appreciated the ability to drive the topics based on their interests and the open forum. In turn, the roundtable experts enjoyed having more individualized conversations and were very open and willing to share their expertise.

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