Army gets integration help

The Army Enterprise Integration Oversight Office last week awarded a contract to help develop policies and guidance for defining information technology systems across the Army enterprise.

Details about the contract, including its recipient, will be made public soon by Kevin Carroll, the service's program executive officer for Enterprise Information Systems, said Carla von Bernewitz, director of the integration oversight office.

Her agency was established Dec. 16, 2002, to provide policy and guidance for IT definitions and implementations across the Army, and work with rest of the Defense Department, von Bernewitz said in an interview today.

"We're not developing any systems," she said. "My office is supporting the concept of the Army as an enterprise."

The office's top priority is ensuring that the Army's business systems — which include personnel, logistics and finance — have integrated transformational initiatives and legacy systems, and work together across the functional domains, said von Bernewitz, who reports directly to R. Les Brownlee, acting secretary of the Army.

Von Bernewitz supervises with a staff of 20. Those workers are evenly split between government employees and contractors, and she said there are no plans to change the office's size or makeup, although current conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq have "stretched thin" her staff and the entire Army.

Carroll said he has worked frequently with von Bernewitz since her office was established. His responsibilities range from upgrading the service's tactical communications in southwest Asia to leading the Army's biometrics efforts.

"She is [trying to] ensure that these functional communities are moving in the right direction and working any integration issues between the communities," Carroll said.

Von Bernewitz was a consultant before agreeing to head the Army office late last year, she said. Her previous government experience includes a stint as the chief information officer at the Defense Logistics Agency.