Charles Lyons-Burt
Jeff Harman has an affinity for every step and aspect of the government contracting process, especially the competitive capture pursuit and the accountability enforced by government clients. Harman is a U.S. Air Force veteran who, after a decade of service, made the transition to GovCon out of a desire to provide “meaningful technologies to the warfighter that solve real problems.” The majority of his career, which included a small firm named BBN and then CACI International, has been spent in the IT domain.
Harman says he “grew up” at CACI, starting as a program director and ascending to an eventual post of senior vice president. His mentors at CACI were responsible for helping him grow his leadership skills into what they are today — he now leads telecommunications company Oceus as president and CEO, a position he’s held for the majority of this decade.
ExecutiveBiz spoke with Harman for a Spotlight interview that covered a lot of ground: new offerings from Oceus like the Oceus Intelligence Controller; what changes Harman would like to see come to fruition to make business with the federal government easier; and the progress being made in the Department of Defense with 5G deployment, among other topics.
Converse with top DOD officials about 5G and FutureG at the Potomac Officers Club’s 2025 5G Summit on February 27. Topics of focus will include open radio access network, or ORAN, deployment, strengthening 5G usage in the field and much more. Join your GovCon peers and competitors at the event!
ExecutiveBiz: What factors or GovCon industry trends are influencing your growth strategy as you look toward Oceus’ future?
Jeff Harman: To me, it comes down to two things. We spend a lot of time talking to customers, understanding where they’re going, what their needs are and looking at broader factors. For example, if you’re familiar with the National Defense Authorization Act and how it allocates funding, you can see how it shapes our work. The Pacific Deterrence Initiative and the European Deterrence Initiative are moving funds to those theaters, and that’s driving our strategy. They’re clearly signaling where more money and capability are needed, which shifts our focus. For a long time, we were more concentrated on the special operations community. Now, we’re broadening that focus to support those two major theaters, and we’re actively deploying systems there as part of that strategy.
The second big factor is the growth of artificial intelligence. It’s not just being used in obvious areas but also in places where it creates unexpected advantages. For instance, we’re integrating AI into our tool suites—namely Oceus Intelligence Controller—and also exploring AI for request for proposal analysis. It helps us identify RFPs that match our capabilities and respond more quickly and effectively. This approach allows us to be more detailed and faster in our responses. So, from a trend perspective, those are the two key areas we’ve been focused on.
EBiz: In the near future, is Oceus looking to develop a deeper set of capabilities in your current fields or expand your offerings to include new capabilities in new fields?
Harman: This is an interesting question because we’re actually doing both right now. One of our key market strategies, even before the 5G releases, was to build software tools that allow us to deploy or manage complex systems more easily and without a large expense or heavy software burden. We’ve been developing a tool called the Oceus Intelligence Controller, or OIC. This tool allows us to deploy networks faster by incorporating planning, provisioning, and implementation into a single system. It also enables us to create a digital twin of the network, manage it more effectively, and significantly reduce the time needed to build a network. What used to take weeks now takes days, cutting labor costs by about 80 percent.
The tool is allowing us to go deeper in what we do, and we’ve realized it’s not just useful for 5G. It works for other communication systems as well. This has opened up new opportunities for us to bid on projects beyond what OIC supports today. We’re seeing possibilities in enterprise IT, other communication waveforms that provide transport, and even cyber opportunities related to electronic warfare. These are areas where we didn’t initially see a natural fit, but the tool has positioned us to compete.
EBiz: If you could enact three changes in the federal government, what would they be and why?
Harman: One of the most critical issues is getting budgets approved and allocated to the Department of Defense faster. You’re seeing this play out right now with the announcement of the government shutdown. As a taxpayer, I don’t think we’re doing ourselves any favors by allowing delays like this. It puts DOD clients in a position where they sometimes have to spend irrationally. That’s not their fault. It’s because they don’t get their budget until late March. By the time they receive the budget and can actuate the funds — which takes time — it’s already May or June. Then they’re up against the end of the fiscal year and have to get that money allocated, obligated and spent.
To me, that’s the top issue. We need budgets approved and allocated sooner, and the process needs to be more efficient. The second issue is getting experimental money to operational funds, which is one of the main reasons the Defense Innovation Unit was created. We need a better process for moving technology from research and development to the programs of record. You hear people talk about legacy programs and modernization, but we need stronger analysis on how to take something meaningful to the DOD and get it through procurement. The current process takes too long, and that delay impacts everything downstream.
The third issue is misinformation and faulty analysis. Sometimes individuals involved in procurement analysis, like cost and data analysts, or CDAs, rebrand themselves as experts in AI, cyber, or whatever the hot topic of the moment is. That can lead to flawed analysis and confusion. We need the right people providing accurate information about these technologies. Our industry could do a better job of taking the mystery out of complex technologies. I think that would lead to better procurements and faster adoption of meaningful technology. Frankly, that’s also what the Potomac Officers Club is trying to do — bring people together to have these conversations. If we can improve how we educate and inform, I believe we’ll see better outcomes across the board.
EBiz: What barriers remain in achieving widespread 5G deployment and getting 5G into the hands of our warfighters?
Harman: I’m really encouraged by what I’m seeing at the DOD. If you look at the work of the 5G cross-functional team under Juan Ramirez and the efforts of Dr. Thomas Rondeau with FutureG, they’ve done a tremendous job. This ties back to my earlier point about misinformation and education. They’ve focused heavily on informing, educating and helping move experimental ideas into real-world operational networks — and it’s starting to pay off.
Oceus is now deploying networks in the Indo-Pacific Command, specifically in Guam, as well as in U.S. Africa Command. These aren’t experimental networks. They’re operational communication platforms supporting use cases like force protection, morale, welfare and recreation, or MWR, quick reaction, and tactical applications. These networks are doing some really impactful work for the warfighter, and we’re seeing tangible progress that aligns with the goals of funding initiatives like the aforementioned Pacific Deterrence Initiative and the European Deterrence Initiative.
The doctrine coming out of the cross-functional team under Ramirez is also notable. People are recognizing that, yes, there are always vulnerabilities in IT systems — that’s just the nature of the space. But instead of letting that be a barrier, the focus is shifting toward understanding how to mitigate those vulnerabilities and still make systems operational. I’m encouraged by that shift. I think it allows us to adopt new technologies faster, which goes back to my earlier point about being more educated on what a system is and isn’t.
Every IT system has vulnerabilities. It’s a bit negligent to claim that cellular is the wrong protocol simply because it’s exposed. It’s no more or less exposed than other protocols. But it does have a role, and it fits into what we call a primary, alternate, contingency, emergency, or PACE, plan. Each layer has a purpose, and cellular is one of those layers. I think that recognition is becoming more widely understood, which is a positive step for everyone involved.
