Podcasts by On DoD

Federal News Network Special Report | Nowhere safe to hide: What online harassment is doing to service members and the military from 2022-04-26T13:07:47

The internet is a forum for harassment that women in the military can't escape. They are being bombarded by toxic comments, vile memes and even stalking. Yet, the Pentagon has few answers for a ...

How the Pentagon's first chief software officer sees the state of software management in DoD from 2022-04-06T17:26:02

Jason Weiss was appointed back in January 2021 as DoD’s first-ever Chief Software Officer. Weiss has decided he’s ready to move back to the private sector. In this episode, he tells Jared Serbu a...

The logistics of fuel storage in INDOPACOM and the military's moving contract from 2022-03-10T21:46:51

On this episode of On DoD, a bit of a logistics focus. First, we talk with Tim Walton, a fellow at the Hudson Institute, about DoD's somewhat surprising decision to close down its Red Hill fuel st...

DoD's Danielle Metz on how the multibillion dollar JWCC cloud contract will actually work from 2022-01-19T17:21:21

On this episode, an extended discussion with Danielle Metz, the deputy DoD chief information officer for information enterprise. Metz explains how Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Oracle will actually...

Army's DEVCOM takes 'future of work' from concept to reality from 2021-12-30T18:23:03

It’s fair to say there are a lot of institutions across government that are still figuring out what the future of work will look like. In this episode, we revisit one of the Army organizations that...

DoD's new moving contract and the Army's new unified network plan from 2021-11-17T20:39:42

On this week's show, we talk to Al Thompson, the CEO of Homesafe Alliance, the joint venture U.S. Transportation Command just picked for a $6.2 billion contract to overhaul the military's household...

Demystifying Other Transaction Agreements from 2021-11-03T16:18:17

On this edition of On DoD: a deep dive on other transaction
agreements.  

According to the Federal Procurement Data System DoD’s use
of OTAs has skyrocketed from 342 agree...

Top priorities for two of the Pentagon's newest senior technology executives from 2021-10-20T19:50:43

On this edition of On DoD, Jared Serbu talks with two newly-sworn-in DoD technology leaders about their priorities: -- Heidi Shyu, the Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering -- Jay...

DAU leadership's take on the future of Defense acquisition from 2021-09-30T19:38:34

The Defense acquisition workforce has faced challenges at other times in its history, but as of 2021, it’s living in interesting times. Contracting officers, program managers and other acquisition ...

New approach to Navy readiness gives leaders ways to measure bang for bucks from 2021-08-15T20:53:35

Rear Admiral Pete Stamatopoulos, the commander of Naval Supply Systems Command joins us to talk about Naval Sustainment System-Supply -- NAVSUP's effort to provide Navy leadership with a holistic a...

Why the fighting force is 'ever shrinking' despite robust Defense budgets from 2021-07-31T14:09:32

On this edition of On DoD, Jared Serbu speaks with Maj. Gen. (ret.) Arnold Punaro, who's just released a new book, The Ever-Shrinking Fighting Force. Punaro, a former staff director of the Senate ...

RIP Commercial Virtual Remote, the tool that forced DoD to behave like an IT enterprise from 2021-06-18T19:09:59

On this week's show, Danielle Metz, the deputy DoD chief information officer for information enterprise talks with Jared Serbu about the shutdown of Commercial Virtual Remote. CVR, the service DoD...

13 ways the Defense Department needs to tighten its oversight of other transaction agreements from 2021-05-13T17:02:13

If you’re curious about exactly where DoD is spending its money on other transaction agreements (OTAs), you won’t find satisfying answers in any public spending databases. When the military service...

Army’s top R&D command charts a course for post-pandemic telework from 2021-03-31T17:23:37

On this week's show, John Willison, the top civilian leader at Army Combat Capabilities Development Command joins Jared Serbu to discuss how DEVCOM is thinking about telework in a post-pandemic env...

A plain language version of what DoD's latest financial audit found from 2021-03-24T16:48:14

The Defense Department is now onto its fourth year of full-scale financial audits. At first glance, the results from the first three years aren’t encouraging: DoD has more auditor-identified financ...

What DoD's new Adaptive Acquisition Framework really means from 2021-03-15T19:04:24

In this edition of On DoD, the Defense Acquisition University's Mike Coolican joins Jared Serbu to explain the fundamentals of DoD's new Adaptive Acquisition Framework, and why this rewrite of the ...

New financing could start to improve Army housing as soon as this summer from 2021-02-11T16:45:11

Under a new agreement with LendLease, a large military housing operator, $1.1 billion in debt-financed housing improvements are expected to start as soon as May across six large Army bases. To expl...

The Defense Production Act and how the Biden administration might use it from 2021-01-27T17:26:49

The Defense Production Act is a special presidential authority we heard about quite a bit toward the beginning of the pandemic as the Trump administration used it to procure personal protective equ...

Big changes coming to how the Navy and Marine Corps buy cloud computing services from 2021-01-06T18:27:20

The Navy Department is making some big changes to how it buys and uses commercial cloud computing services. Within the next few months, all the Navy and Marine Corps’ cloud purchases will be funnel...

How the Navy is using data analytics, AI to boost aviation readiness from 2020-12-16T16:59:37

Like the other military services, the Navy has been working in recent years to improve the readiness of its aviation fleets – especially since cuts under the Budget control Act almost a decade ago ...

Pentagon can't fix software acquisition until it gains a better understanding of its own workforce from 2020-12-04T16:44:13

A new Pentagon working group is trying to bring more rigor to DoD’s management of its software acquisition workforce. But the department faces a major hurdle: it knows almost nothing about the work...

Navy came late to the OTA game, but spending on IT, cyber now 'exploding' from 2020-11-18T17:47:59

In August, the Navy announced it was increasing the ceiling value for its Information Warfare Research Project OTA to $500 million. That’s after IWRP exhausted its initial 100 million dollar ceilin...

DoD's Space Development Agency shows how fast the FAR can be from 2020-11-02T17:15:27

The Pentagon's acquisition system often gets a bad rap -- often deservedly so. But DoD's fledgling Space Development Agency is offering the latest example in why the Federal Acquisition Regulation ...

Army cutting costs by sharing services with local communities from 2020-10-07T20:13:50

The Army is finding new ways to partner with the communities around its bases. Thanks to a 2015 law that lets the military services sign service agreements with local governments without the pain o...

Gearing up for great power competition also helped the Air Force prepare for COVID-19 from 2020-09-23T16:28:28

On this week's program, Maj. Gen. Cameron Holt, the deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force for contracting joins Jared Serbu to discuss a wide range of lessons the acquisition community learn...

How the Army is rethinking its financial managment systems (it's not just an IT problem) from 2020-09-09T17:07:31

On this week's program, Jonathan Moak, the Army's top financial management official, and Greg Garcia, its top IT official, join Jared Serbu to discuss a new initiative to modernize the Army's appro...

Unresolved IG recommendations piling up at DoD from 2020-08-12T08:00

Troy Meyer, DoD's principal deputy inspector general for audit joins Jared Serbu to discuss why open recommendations are headed in the wrong direction (there are now 170 that are five years old or ...

Pentagon CMO claims billions more in savings as Congress seeks to eliminate the position from 2020-07-08T21:29:24

Lisa Hershman, DoD's chief management officer, joins Jared Serbu to discuss the role and mission of the CMO. The office only existed since 2018, but has achieved billions of dollars in savings thr...

Pentagon IG offers advice for effective contracting during pandemic from 2020-06-17T16:58:42

With billions of dollars in CARES Act funding yet to be spent and several billion more potentially in the appropriations pipeline, it’s far too early to tell how effectively the Defense Department ...

Navy aims to unify its IT networks with NGEN-R contract from 2020-05-20T19:30:02

On this week's show, Capt. Ben McNeal, the program manager for Naval Enterprise Networks talks with Jared Serbu about how the Navy hopes to use its latest NGEN contract to consolidate its networks ...

Federal agencies apply supercomputing resources toward COVID-19 pandemic from 2020-04-22T17:40:58

From modeling airflows aboard medical evacuation aircraft to simulating vaccine candidates, the Defense Department's supercomputing resources are being brought to bear on various aspects of the gov...

Pentagon releases last of four solicitations to test 5G technologies from 2020-04-08T15:51:59

Last week, the Defense Department released its latest in a series of requests for prototype proposals (RPPs) to help pave the way for incorporating 5G technologies into military networks. Depending...

Nearly 200 military doctors, nurses graduating early to help with coronavirus from 2020-04-01T16:01:06

Because of the coronavirus crisis, the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences is conferring medical degrees early so those new clinicians can get to work right away. 150 M.D.s and 33 ...

Navy's 'RAISED' process aims to reduce cybersecurity approval processes from months to one day from 2020-03-11T16:22

The Navy is jumping on the bandwagon of federal agencies who are reforming their IT security processes to speed new capabilites through the approval process in as little as a day. That’s a far cry...

Defense Innovation Unit picks 5 commerical companies to help military counter small drones from 2020-03-06T09:18

A little over three years ago, when the forerunner to what’s now called the Defense Innovation Unit was still in its infancy, one of the first projects the Pentagon asked its new Silicon Valley out...

DIU picks 5 commerical companies to help military counter small drones from 2020-03-04T09:05

A little over three years ago, when the forerunner to what’s now called the Defense Innovation Unit was still in its infancy, one of the first projects the Pentagon asked its new Silicon Valley out...

2019 Pentagon audit shows some signs of progress, OIG says from 2020-02-11T22:00

After its first two years of full-scale financial audits, the Defense Department is starting to get some of its first concrete indications of how much work likes ahead of it before it can finally e...

Pivotal year for overhaul of Army's contracting IT systems from 2020-02-04T22:00

For almost a decade now, Congress has been pressing the Defense department to modernize and consolidate the IT systems it uses to write contracts. This is a pivotal year in accomplishing that: The ...

Army's Project Sentinel aims to fix authorization bottleneck for IT systems from 2020-01-21T22:00

It’s been five years since the Defense Department adopted the Risk Management Framework to assess the cybersecurity of its IT systems. It was a rough ride at first, but DoD organizations have start...

Family and supply chain issues join Pentagon's top management challenges this year from 2019-12-03T22:00

The Defense Department Inspector General has released its annual list of the top ten management challenges facing the Pentagon. Most of the items in the 2020 edition are familiar: shoring up financ...

Maj. Gen. Peter Gallagher and Maj. Gen. David Bassett on the Army's integrated tactical network from 2019-11-25T22:00

It’s been a little more than two years since the Army’s chief information officer memorably declared that the battlefield network it has is not the network it needs. Now the service is nearly ready...

With new ad campaign, Army wants to highlight its 'breadth and depth' from 2019-11-07T22:00

The Army’s newly-christened marketing office is set to launch its first ad campaign on Monday, and if there’s one consistent theme that ties the multi-platform messaging strategy together, it’s tha...

Dr. Bruce Jette, Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology from 2019-10-22T21:00

Dr. Bruce Jette, the assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology sits down with Jared Serbu for a wide-ranging discussion on the Army's intellectual property strategy,...

How the Army will 'ruthlessly' enforce its forthcoming data strategy from 2019-09-25T21:00

On this edition of On DoD, Lt. Gen. Bruce Crawford, the Army's Chief Information Officer/G6 talks with Jared Serbu about the Army's forthcoming data strategy -- and the new standards the service...

Building a 'Digital Air Force' from 2019-09-10T21:00

On this week's show, an extended discussion with Matthew Donovan, the undersecretary of the Air Force, and Gen. Stephen Wilson, the service's vice chief of staff. They discussed the rollout of the ...

Navy's new 'strategic' approach to supplier management from 2019-08-29T21:00

For decades, the Navy’s relationship with its spare parts suppliers has been relatively straightforward: when the service needs a batch of items, it places an order, and industry fulfills it. But ...

DoD IG's ADR program yields major increase in resolved whistleblower claims from 2019-07-24T21:00

In the Defense world, formal investigations rarely substantiate whistleblower retaliation claims, especially those from contractor employees. But a new alternative dispute resolution program has al...

Army to select three vendors to start overhauling IT on its bases from 2019-07-16T21:00

First on this weeks show, officials from Army Cyber Command and the Program Executive Office for Enterprise Information Systems join Jared Serbu to talk about the kickoff of the Army's Enterprise I...

Army Secretary Mark Esper; Maj. Gen. Cedric Wins, commander, Combat Capability Development Command from 2019-06-11T21:00

The Army is front and center in this episode. We begin with an exclusive interview with Mark Esper, the Army secretary. Later, Maj. Gen. Cedric Wins from the Army's Combat Capabilities Development ...

Modernizing military training in the sea services from 2019-05-21T21:00

A special edition of On DoD, featuring an abridged version of a panel discussion Jared Serbu moderated at this year’s Navy League Sea-Air-Space expo in National Harbor, Maryland. This conversation ...

The Air Force's new plan to dig out of a $33 billion facility maintenance backlog from 2019-04-03T20:00

Like the other military services, the Air Force has knowingly underfunded its facility maintenance accounts in recent years while its O&M budgets have been squeezed. But officials have come ...

A narrowing supply base for spare parts challenges the Pentagon from 2019-03-13T21:00

It’s not easy for DoD contracting officers to determine whether they’re getting fair and reasonable prices, particularly when they’re dealing with relatively small-dollar value transactions wher...

Why the Pentagon invested research dollars into warp drive, wormholes and invisibility cloaking from 2019-03-06T22:00

We’re turning this week’s show over to Federal News Network’s Jason Miller, who recently talked to several experts about a recently-released DIA report that listed more than three dozen research...

The Navy's new approaches to identity management, cloud computing from 2019-02-19T22:00

On this week's program, two senior Navy IT officials join Jared Serbu to talk about the service's latest plans for identity and cloud computing. Capt. Ben McNeal, the program manager for Naval Ent...

The 6 most serious problems uncovered by DoD's first financial audit from 2019-01-29T22:00

The documentation accompanying DoD's first-ever financial audit is tough for non-auditors to decipher. But as part of its work this year, the DoD Inspector General also released an explanation o...

Pentagon's top management challenges; Navy's latest plan for "maritime superiority" from 2019-01-01T22:00

We have two guests on this week's show:

Brett Mansfield, senior advisor to the Principal Deputy DoD Inspector General talks with Jared Serbu about DoD's top ten management challenges for ...

JEDI protests: one down, but possibly several more to go from 2018-11-27T22:00

The Defense Department has survived the first protest of its JEDI Cloud contract. But there’s at least one more – and mostly likely several more – still to come. Lauren Brier, an associate attor...

Two senior officials describe what's next for the Army's tactical network from 2018-10-30T21:00

It has been a little over a year since the Army began making some fairly monumental changes to its IT networks, including by cancelling the $6 billion dollar Warfighter Information Network Tacti...

DoD's Joint Task Force Civil Support has a small footprint in a no-fail mission from 2018-10-10T21:00

If you’ve never heard of a Defense Department organization called Joint Task Force Civil Support, that’s understandable. And arguably, it’s a good thing. JTF-CS may be the smallest task force in th...

To improve civilian personnel system, DoD says it needs to start with it HR workforce from 2018-09-29T21:00

The general topic of human capital management has been on the Government Accountability Office's list of federal "high risk" areas since 2001. But the Defense Department has come to the conclusion ...

Army uses unconventional challenge process to advance data science for electronic warfare from 2018-09-11T21:00

The Army wants to use artificial intelligence and machine learning to help its electronic warfare officers sort out signal from noise on the battlefield. And to pick the best solutions, it’s using ...

Pentagon IG highlights more than 1,500 open recommendations, some dating back a decade from 2018-08-21T21:00

For the second year in a row, the Defense department’s inspector general has just released a “compendium” of open recommendations. The document is a list of all the recommendations the DOD IG has i...

Army begins moving cyber exercises from sterile "ranges" to a real city from 2018-08-14T21:00

The Army already owns what amounts to fully-functional city it uses that it uses for traditional military training events in southeastern Indiana. But until recently, it hasn't been used for cyber ...

The biggest challenges in setting up the new Army Futures Command are still ahead from 2018-07-31T21:00

Ever since they first announced the idea last Fall, Army leaders have intended the new Army Futures Command to serve as a single entity to oversee the service's sprawling acquisition and modernizat...

A few of the acquisition experts who helped inform our series on other transaction authorities from 2018-07-24T21:00

On this week’s edition of On DoD, we go a bit deeper into Federal News Radio’s series, Danger at High Speed: OTAs in Action. This edition of the program features some of the extended interviews Sco...

With an emphasis on speed, Navy's $100 million OTA for information warfare aims for two-way relationship with IT innovators from 2018-07-17T21:00

For the Navy, a new $100 million other transaction agreement focusing on information warfare isn’t just a way to turn government requirements into prototypes and fielded products at a faster clip t...

DoD's latest plan to manage its "total force" of servicemembers, civilians and contractors from 2018-06-26T21:00

Last year, the White House called on all federal agencies to draw up plans to reduce the government's civilian workforce. The Defense Department responded with a plan that explicitly rejected the p...

NAVSUP looks for ways to turn data into better business decisions from 2018-06-25T21:00

Naval Supply Systems Command is not suffering from a lack of data. But the information it holds about its responsibilities to move food, parts and supplies around the world tends to be unstructured...

Section 809 panel's recommendations not just sitting on the shelf from 2018-06-12T00:00

The Section 809 Panel -- the commission Congress chartered to study reforms to the federal acquisition system -- is already seeing some of its work reflected in federal legislation. The House's ver...

Amid mandate to move to milCloud, DISA offers tools to smooth the transition from 2018-05-15T21:00

DISA's milCloud 2.0 is about to get a wave of new customers, thanks to a Pentagon mandate to move "fourth estate" applications to the new service.

In DoD, a new approach to testing weapons systems for cybersecurity from 2018-05-13T21:00

In this week's edition of On DoD, Robert Behler, the Defense Department's new Director of Operational Test and Evaluation, talks with Jared Serbu about new procedures the department is using to tes...

A conversation with the personnel chiefs of each of the sea services from 2018-04-18T21:00

A special edition of On DoD: This week's program is an abridged version of a panel discussion at the annual Sea Air Space conference with the personnel chiefs of the Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Gu...

How the Army plans to compress its IT acquisition process into under a month from 2018-04-03T21:00

Some members of Congress and some corners of the Defense Department have become enamored of the idea of using other transaction authorities instead of traditional contracts as the way to force the ...

DoD Inspector General Glenn Fine; Army uses IT to make its headquarters orgs more efficient from 2018-03-20T21:00

Glenn Fine, the Defense Department’s principal deputy inspector general joins us in the first half of this week's show to talk about the audit of DoD’s consolidated financial statements, and some ...

How DoD is using Code.mil to kickstart open source software for Defense from 2018-03-13T21:00

Under this year’s Defense authorization bill, the Defense Department has until June to start moving much of its custom-developed software source code to a central repository and begin managing and ...

Rear Adm. Danelle Barrett, Navy CIO on cloud computing and "Compile-to-Combat in 24 hours" from 2018-02-27T22:00

Rear. Adm. Danelle Barrett, the Navy’s chief information officer is our guest for the full hour this week.

She and Jared Serbu spend the bulk of the hour discussing some major changes her...

Amid wave of Army data center closures, ALTESS is "staging area" for apps not ready to move to cloud from 2018-02-14T09:00

It’s now been a little over a year since the secretary of the Army issued a highly-prescriptive directive telling its commands and installations exactly which IT systems needed to move from which d...

Conaway: Reason for optimism as DoD begins its first audit from 2018-01-24T12:01

There's no shortage of members of Congress who have been pounding the table for DoD to get its financial statements in order so that the department can pass a clean audit. There are only a few, tho...

DoD's new health record forcing broader IT upgrades throughout military health system from 2017-12-20T12:01

The military health system recently marked the successful installation of its new electronic health record at DoD's first four pilot sites in the Pacific Northwest. But the process is nowhere near ...

DoD's only still-serving WWII veteran celebrates 75 years of federal service from 2017-11-08T12:01

Every veterans day, were reminded that there are fewer and fewer World War II veterans who are still with us. One of them happens to still be working for the federal government, and hes been doing ...

After years of drawdowns, Army's switch to growth mode puts pressure on recruiting mission from 2017-10-18T12:01

After years of shrinking the force, the Army is suddenly in growth mode again, creating new challenges for recruiters. Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Snow, the commander of Army Recruiting Command talks with Ja...

Pentagon's new IT provider declares full operating capability, becomes part of DISA from 2017-10-04T12:01

Two years after senior Defense leaders first ordered the consolidation of all IT and cyber defense services in and around the Pentagon, the organization that came to be known as the Joint Service P...

Air Force's new Installation and Mission Support Center marks full operational capability; IBM brings AI into Army logistics from 2017-09-27T12:01

On this week's show: The new command the Air Force announced three years ago to centralize its installation management and other support functions reaches its full operating capability. Maj. Gen. B...

Army sets out on two-year effort to standardize IT in combat formations from 2017-09-13T12:01

On this week's show, three guests from the Army's program management office for Mission Command join us to discuss an ambitious, two-year effort to upgrade the hardware and software used by some 40...

Cybersecurity: Elevating CYBERCOM, and DoD's latest bug bounty from 2017-08-23T12:01

On this weeks show, we discuss three cyber topics: President Trumps long-awaited decision on the future of U.S. Cyber Command, the results of Hack the Air Force, DoD's latest bug bounty, and a fede...

Michael McGhee, Executive Director, Army Office of Energy Initiatives from 2017-07-14T12:01

The Army's Office of Energy Initiatives is the service's central hub for managing the financing and planning for "utility scale" renewable and alternative energy projects. Michael McGhee, OEI's exe...

Rear Adm. David Hahn, Chief of Naval Research from 2017-06-21T09:01

Rear Adm. David Hahn, the chief of Naval research joins Jared Serbu to discuss the Navy's Concept Challenge: a call to the public for "leap-ahead" technologies.

Sailor 2025: 40+ initiatives to help the Navy compete for talent from 2017-05-31T09:01

Our guest this week is Vice Adm. Robert Burke, the chief of naval personnel. He talks with us about progress so far in a Navy personnel reform initiative called Sailor 2025, including ongoing effor...

Hacking the Air Force; Moving the Army to the cloud from 2017-05-03T09:01

In this week's edition of On DoD, Peter Kim, the Air Force's chief technology officer, Alex Rice, the CTO at HackerOne, and Reina Staley, the chief of staff of the Defense Digital Service join is t...

Experts assess the legacy of DoD's Better Buying Power initiatives from 2017-03-01T02:01

This week's edition of On DoD is part of a Federal News Radio special report: Defense Acquisition at a Crossroads. We'll hear from several Defense acquisition experts to hear their assessments of w...