DoD CIO Honors Innovation, Modernization in IT

By Terri Moon Cronk DoD News, Defense Media Activity

WASHINGTON, Nov. 30, 2017 — More than 20 individuals and teams across the Defense Department were honored today for cyber and information technology excellence in a Pentagon ceremony.

“I'm excited about the awards here this year. ... We have a lot of great people who did wonderful things with their talent to further the mission of the Department of Defense,” said John A. Zangardi, DoD’s acting chief information officer.

Calling the awards justly earned, Zangardi noted that senior DoD leadership is focused on increasing the department’s lethality, capability and effectiveness, and IT is an area it is focusing the reform management group on to deliver more capability at lower costs.

“So your efforts [are] aligned to the bigger picture … and that's important,” he said.

IT is an area that could deliver capability to the warfighter, Zangardi said.

Future Challenges

“There are lots of challenges ahead of us in the years to come in IT,” he added. “We need to stay on top of it because the marketplace … is changing very quickly.”

Zangardi said technology is constantly evolving and DoD must be on its toes.

“More importantly, we need to make sure that we don’t lose sight of putting bureaucracy in the way of delivering information technology for our warfighters. We should go in with [the attitude of] ‘Yes, we could do that, let’s figure out how to do it,’” he said.

This year’s CIO Award recipients include:

Individual Category

-- Army Maj. Uchenna Njoku, command, control, communications and computers planner, Joint Staff C4 and Cyber;

-- Navy Cmdr. David Perry, communications directorate head, U.S. Special Operations Command;

-- Aspasia Wooldridge, chief logistics officer, chief information officer support division, Air Force; and

-- Navy Ist Lt. Joseph Winchell, development operations lead, 90th Cyber Protection Team, Joint Forces Headquarters-Department of Defense Information Networks, Cyber Defense Activity 64, U.S. Cyber Command.

Team Category

-- Health Information Technology Team, Defense Health Agency;

-- U.S. Air Force Strategic Command, Cyberspace Support Squadron, U.S. Strategic Command;

-- My Navy Portal Government Cloud Team, Navy;

-- Defense Enterprise Computing Center Pacific Closure Team, Defense Information Systems Agency;

-- Mission Partner Environment Implementation for the Warfighter/Multinational Information Sharing Team, Defense Information Systems Agency;

-- Military Sealift Command Knowledge Management Team, Navy;

-- Army Cybersecurity Scorecard Team, Headquarters Department of the Army Chief Information Officer, U.S. Army Cyber Command, U.S. Army Network Command;

-- Multinational Information Sharing Team, U.S. Pacific Command; and

-- Enterprise Learning Services Organization Team, Air Force.

Honorable Mention -- Individual Category

-- Army Capt. Christopher Apsey, deputy director, Cyber Technical College, U.S. Army Cyber School, U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command;

-- Raymond Cavanaugh, data center optimization lead, C4, Network Plans and Policy Division, Headquarters, Marine Corps;

-- Capt. Jeremy Thompson, deputy director, current operations, 24th Air Force, U.S. Cyber Command; and

-- Air Force Lt. Col. David Ware, chief information officer, Air Force Test and Evaluation, U.S. Air Force.

Honorable Mention -- Team Category

-- Enterprise Level Agreements Team, Secretary of the Air Force/chief information officer A6, U.S. Air Force;

-- Department of Defense Public Web Team, Defense Media Activity;

-- Naval Special Warfare Group Ten N6, U.S. Navy, U.S. Special Operations Command;

-- Non-Classified Internet Protocol Router Network/Secret Internet Protocol Router Network, Cybersecurity Architecture Review Team, National Security Agency; and

-- Sprint to The Cloud Team, U.S. Transportation Command.