Jane Edwards
Bob Ritchie, chief technology officer at SAIC, said during the Federal Tech Podcast that while systems integration deals with integrating cyberphysical systems, software and other technologies to achieve a better outcome, mission integration is focused on achieving mission outcomes by adapting to technological advancements and learning iteratively.
“And the role of a mission integrator is to keep tabs on all of that technological change, but never lose sight of the purpose, which is to drive those mission outcomes,” Ritchie told podcast host John Gilroy.
“Drive faster decisions. Drive decision advantage when you’re thinking in the defense and national security space. Drive to a better citizen experience or constituent experience when you’re thinking about filing your taxes or applying for a passport or a visa,” he added.
Innovation Partner Ecosystem
At SAIC, the technology leader noted that there are three Es in the mission integration space: experience, expertise and ecosystem.
During the podcast, Ritchie discussed the creation of a mission-centered innovation partner ecosystem that is also focused on national imperatives.
“But you’re also seeing it in kind of the non traditionals and the Silicon Valley startups who have this now patriotic national focus. And those are the folks we want to work together with to create this innovative ecosystem that becomes the graduate level program to take all that power and momentum of the technology and funnels it through to the right mission outcomes,” he explained.
Mature Approach to Tech Adoption
The SAIC executive cited the need to take a mature approach to technology adoption, such as considering mission outcomes in cloud migration efforts.
“Don’t move to cloud for cloud’s sake. Move to cloud as a way to enable your mission outcomes to get to a kind of value faster velocity to value faster. And then leverage the other components of technology,” he stressed.
Ritchie also highlighted the need for organizations to advance the strategic use of legacy platforms like mainframes.
“Maybe we’re in this fundamental undergrad level looking at it of, like, I gotta close down all my mainframes and move everything to cloud. But if you look at what mainframes are really good at, high speed volume transactions with … minimal error rates, and just use the mainframe for that, the cost per transaction of a mainframe of processing, you know, millions of financial transactions per second is way cheaper per transaction compared to what it would be in the cloud,” he stated.
“And that’s another kind of, I would say, attribute of a mission integrator is being pragmatic enough to understand that even twenty or thirty year old technology has a place,” the CTO added.
