Women in NOVA Host Panel on Business System Reform

The AFCEA Women in Nova (WIN) held a panel in October titled "Business System Reform - What's different this time?" It provided attendees insight from engaging government executives on DOD's recent business reform efforts. The speakers were Greg Little, Business Integration Office, Office of the Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller), and Nikki Cabezas, project lead, IT and Business Reform Team, Department of Defense Chief Information Officer. The moderator, Ray Miles, strategic account executive, ImmixGroup Inc., provided an introduction describing the complexity of the DOD environment and asked the panelists how their organizations are meeting the challenge of business reform. Little described how his office is using data collection and associated analytics to provide an enterprise capability for the department to help agencies reduce cost and produce customer satisfaction. They are working to provide four financial data capabilities: 1) analytics as a service, 2) data as a service, 3) software as a service and 4) infrastructure as a service. These services are intended to support audit and accountability, cost management and performance management, and provide metrics for better agency decision making. He shared that they are looking for pockets of excellence across DOD to share lessons learned from those organizations. Cabezas spoke about her organization's goals being to establish a resilient and stable IT infrastructure, and to consolidate business systems, reducing operational costs, leveraging enterprise shared services and consolidating purchasing. For her, the challenge of reform is more about culture than IT. Integration of business operations is as important as the IT support. The key to driving change is to have change champions and to bring people from different services together for information sharing. This does not always result in measurable results, but provides valuable information sharing across the services and improves the overall organization. When asked what industry can do to help, Cabezas said the key is to understand where out of the box services can be used to help the government be more efficient. Little stated, "work yourself out of a job" by transitioning current process to the government and working on the next innovation. After the formal panel, the speakers stayed behind and spoke one-on-one with many attendees.

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