Army IT portfolio plan almost ready

Army leaders are close to approving a new plan by the service’s chief information officer to improve how Army systems communicate with each other.

Gen. Peter Schoomaker, Army chief of staff, has approved the system interoperability plan, but Francis Harvey, secretary of the Army, is still making recommendations on it, said Lt. Gen. Steve Boutelle, the service’s CIO/G-6, at Army Information Technology Day June 29. The one-day conference is sponsored by the Northern Virginia chapter of the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association.

The plan primarily relies on IT portfolio management. It will require Army officials who oversee key areas including logistics and intelligence to identify all of their IT systems, register them for interoperability testing at the service’s Central Technical Software Facility at Fort Hood, Texas, and explain how long they will stay in service, Boutelle said, speaking to attendees at the event and during a media briefing after his speech.

Schoomaker asked Boutelle this spring to improve how Army systems share information with each other after interoperability issues arose with a logistics system in Iraq.

“My concern is interoperability and total cost of ownership,” Boutelle said.