SEA AIR SPACE 2025 — The Department of the Navy is looking forward to working with Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in making its software practices more efficient, the DON’s chief information officer said Tuesday.
According to Jane Rathbun, DOGE recently began working with the DoD’s CIO to cut down software programs and processes across the department that it deemed unnecessary. As far as she knows, no DON programs have been cut yet, though she said she’s hopeful that DOGE’s work will help the Navy to reach its goals related to software modernization and effectiveness.
“I think that at its essence, what the DOGE wants to do is become more efficient, and that is core to how we view our own portfolio,” Rathburn told Breaking Defense on the sidelines of the Sea Air Space conference Tuesday. “We really would like to see them help us out, solve problems and get on the right path, and so I’m looking forward to engagements on that.”
Rathbun said cutting down tedious and redundant software acquisition processes and programs is something she’s long been interested in doing, however, she has not had the resources.
“Are we buying effectively? Are we utilizing the things that we’re buying effectively? There’s always opportunity for improvement, and I would say that’s an area in my portfolio that I want to focus on, but have not had a lot of people to do that, which is something that has always bothered me, and I want to be doing better,” she said during a panel discussion.
Rathbun said that one way that the DON hopes to achieve the efficiency DOGE is looking for is through the use of commercial off the shelf (COTS) software — software that’s made by commercial companies and is ready to use with no customization needed. It often has capabilities that allow for built-in software updates and has become increasingly popular across the military as the department attempts to catch up to the commercial industry’s modern software practices.
Utilizing already available software tools cuts down the time the DON wastes on customizing software, a practice that Rathburn is committing to ending.
“No, we’re not customizing. We’re going to use it as it was intended to be used. If we don’t do that, we will be in this state again of having really old software that hasn’t kept pace with what’s happening in the industry,” she said. “That is costly and that is unsustainable.”
Meanwhile, Lt. Gen. Melvin “Jerry” Carter, deputy commandant of information for the Marine Corps, said the DON needs to cut back in some areas in order to acquire more pressing capabilities.
“I would just say looking inward, we had the conversation within the service about our program of records. What I’m talking about is if they are not meeting the mail, and we know that there is a commercial solution out there that can help us go faster, in my opinion, we should have the courage to stop doing some things and invest in other things,” he said during the panel.
Rathbun pointed to the fact that the Pentagon spends over $5 billion on software annually, which is not much compared to how much it spends on hardware and advanced weapons systems, but department leaders should still try to get the “biggest bang for [their] buck out of that consumption,” she said.
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