Army IT Agency: An exemplar of enterprise IT transformation

Don Adcock is the executive director of the Information Technology Agency  (ITA) of the US Army.  The ITA is the executive agent for many OSD IT functions in the DC area and is a group which must operate a highly functioning IT enterprise at a very high level of availability.

Don recently conducted an interview on Fed News Radio where he provided some insights into how the Army ITA is addressing its challenges and how their business model is changing.  If you are an enterprise technologist in any enterprise, federal or not, large or small, I would recommend you listen to Don’s interview.  To me it hits on several items any CIO, CTO or other IT leader should track.

I’m not talking about the specific business model.  Although that is important as well.  I’m talking about the power of vision and the power of being able to articulate that vision in a clear, compelling way.  These are classic leadership qualities good to see in any field, but incredibly important in IT.

As for the ITA, Don took over there in March 2010 and now leads the group in its mission.  They provide a reliable, secure, cost-efficient IT services to the DoD …

Don Adcock is the executive director of the Information Technology Agency  (ITA) of the US Army.  The ITA is the executive agent for many OSD IT functions in the DC area and is a group which must operate a highly functioning IT enterprise at a very high level of availability.

Don recently conducted an interview on Fed News Radio where he provided some insights into how the Army ITA is addressing its challenges and how their business model is changing.  If you are an enterprise technologist in any enterprise, federal or not, large or small, I would recommend you listen to Don’s interview.  To me it hits on several items any CIO, CTO or other IT leader should track.

I’m not talking about the specific business model.  Although that is important as well.  I’m talking about the power of vision and the power of being able to articulate that vision in a clear, compelling way.  These are classic leadership qualities good to see in any field, but incredibly important in IT.

As for the ITA, Don took over there in March 2010 and now leads the group in its mission.  They provide a reliable, secure, cost-efficient IT services to the DoD community inside the national capital region (the beltway).  They deliver a comprehensive suite of tools and capabilities.   ITA supports the Pentagon and many other facilities in the area. They are the “single agency manager” for this function. Don has the tough job of having to serve a broad community of stakeholders, including reps from every service and agency in the DC area.   They provide storage, COOP, telecommunications, telephone services, e-mail, networks, messaging, backup, desktops, engineering systems development and design, Information Assurance, and of course O&M on all that.

Right now ITA is in the middle of a transformation. They are changing it from a functionally organized business model to an enterprise model to align more with service delivery.  Over the next 6 months Don’s goals are to ensure this transition is complete and then develop a program to continue to optimize.

You can find out more about Don and the ITA at:

http://www.oaa.army.mil

And listen to the Fed News Radio interview at:

http://www.federalnewsradio.com/index.php?nid=42&sid=1550881

And for those with an ability to contribute to the ITA mission, please consider attending the ITA industry day of 15 June 2010.  For more on that see:

https://secureapp2.hqda.pentagon.mil/dtsw_cms/customcf/ita/

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