DoD Cloud Delays Hamper Missions: IT Leaders

WASHINGTON: A new survey of DoD IT leaders shows that, while the vast majority know the benefits of moving to the cloud, a full 96 percent say they are experiencing delays.

Some perceive the delays to be much more costly than just missed benefits. One leader observed: “Enterprise cloud delays are hindering our [department’s] ability to complete mission-critical tasks.”

Another leader said: “Enterprise cloud delays cost money and negatively impact national defense.”

The major cause of delays is not personnel (31 percent) nor funding (31 percent), officials say. Instead, they cite security (44 percent), governance (38 percent), and complexity (38 percent) as the top hurdles in their journey to the cloud.

Interestingly, given the cloud security concerns cited, officials say the biggest consequence of delays is increased cybersecurity risk (47 percent), followed by higher costs (43 percent), organizational inefficiencies (42 percent), and complex data management (41 percent).

However, officials say the benefits of moving to the cloud are many, with better agility, higher reliability, improved data management, enhanced delivery of services, advanced analytics, and improved speed and accuracy of battlefield decision-making all cited in the survey.

One leader said: “It is going to cost us more in the future if we don’t remedy enterprise cloud delays.”

So, what do DoD IT leaders say they need to move faster? Well, 49 percent of them point to the need for better guidance from the top and 44 percent cite the need for stronger policy directives. Overall, 71 percent say top DoD leadership “is not doing enough” to speed migration to cloud.

MeriTalk, a public-private partnership focused on improving government IT outcomes, conducted the survey in April and published the results this month. The survey tallies responses from 100 leaders, most in C-level or director positions across all four services, some combatant commands, the Joint Staff, and the DoD inspector general’s office. MeriTalk noted a 9 percent margin of error and a 95 percent confidence level.

The survey comes two years after the DoD released its Cloud Strategy with three “pillars”:

• The Defense Enterprise Office Solution (DEOS) to be used for “secure productivity and collaboration in classified and unclassified environments;”
• The Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI), which is envisioned to be “a general purpose enterprise cloud for DoD;” and
• milCloud 2.0, described as a “secure, on-premise, fit-for-purpose DoD enterprise cloud.”

Of these, DEOS and milCloud 2.0 are currently available to DoD and mission partners. milCloud 2.0, which went live in February 2018, recently added off-premise, general-purpose capabilities.

JEDI, however, is stalled amid ongoing legal fights over the contract award, the survey notes.

“Delays are causing frustration and wasting resources,” one leader said.

Remarkably, amid the delays and accompanying frustrations, a full 84 percent report being optimistic about the future of DoD’s enterprise cloud.

Still, some 68 percent of the IT leaders surveyed say the enterprise cloud delays are hurting their ability to carry out missions. “The more we wait, the more vulnerable we are,” one leader said.