New Defense CIO on the job

John Stenbit's answers to the Senate Armed Services Committee

John Stenbit has been sworn in as the new Defense Department chief information officer.

Stenbit, a former executive with TRW Inc., was confirmed by the Senate Aug. 3 and was sworn in by David Cooke, DOD's director of administration and management, during a ceremony Aug. 7.

Stenbit is also assistant secretary of Defense for command, control, communications and intelligence. He replaces Art Money, who left that post in April.

Stenbit was executive vice president for special assignments at TRW's Aerospace and Information Systems unit before retiring in May 2001. In earlier posts, he served as executive vice president and general manager of TRW Systems Integration Group, responsible for the engineering and integration of complex systems such as strategic and tactical command and control, information processing and security.

He has also served as chairman of the Federal Aviation Administration's Research, Engineering and Development Advisory Committee and chairman of the Science and Technology Advisory Panel at the CIA.

The assistant secretary of Defense for command, control, communications and intelligence serves as the adviser to the secretary of Defense on information superiority, communications and intelligence policy issues.

An early issue facing Stenbit is the level of testing needed for the Navy Marine Corps Intranet. Linton Wells II, who had been the acting DOD CIO, has been a major proponent for more extensive testing than the standard for commercial systems.