Military services see innovation as a way to cope with IT budget cuts

Senior military technology leaders said they expect advances in thin-client computing, tiered data storage and other innovations in information management will help them achieve substantial savings to cope with inevitable budget cuts on the horizon.

"Each service has established [savings] targets internally, and we have set targets at the department level," said Rob Carey, deputy chief information officer at the Defense Department. "We're all forcing ourselves to examine the capacity of our IT structure," he said during a panel discussion sponsored by Government Executive Media Group in Crystal City, Va., Tuesday.

The Navy's IT savings target -- a 25 percent reduction over the next five years -- is the most aggressive. Barbara Hoffman, Navy deputy CIO, said the service expects to achieve substantial savings by moving operations to the cloud and storing data more efficiently.

Army Deputy CIO Maj. Gen. Mark Bowman said his service sees enormous promise in thin client technology, where data-intensive computing processes are handled by a server supporting multiple "dumb" terminals.

"Initially there was big push back," Bowman said, when the technology was implemented at U.S. Central Command. Countering the "box huggers" in an organizational culture that valued putting a processor under every desk was difficult, but the technology, which has grown more sophisticated in recent years, allowed the command to cut costs and improve security, he said.

"Thin client really has huge promise for us in a number of ways," he said. "It saves power, it saves desk space, it increases security and it saves money. I think it's something we're going to see a whole lot more of."

As the services right-size their computing capacity, Carey said cybersecurity will remain a priority.