Christine Thropp
Executive Mosaic is pleased to present a 2022 Wash100 Award to Aaron Weis, chief information officer of the Department of the Navy, for his efforts to continue modernization of enterprise information technology as DON seeks to prevent a regress to its pre-pandemic IT practices.
The award marks Weis’ third consecutive Wash100 recognition. He was first inducted in 2020 for driving the department’s IT and cyber readiness objectives and the second time highlighted his leadership in updating the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps’ IT processes and security measures in the previous year.
Visit Wash100.com to cast your votes for Weis and your other favorite GovCon leaders.
Weis has held the CIO post since September 2019. Since then, he has been responsible for providing the Navy secretary with information management, digital, data and cyber strategy support, and has been focused on IT and national security system expenditures and investment.
The DON CIO kicked off 2021 by outlining his Navy IT priorities for the year in an effort to prevent a fall back into pre-pandemic IT process that he believes slow down projects and contribute little value to the service.
“We have very fragmented [command and control] and accountability over our IT infrastructure, which, in normal times makes it very difficult for us to move the needle,” he said.
One such priority is accelerating cloud services adoption to transform the naval IT infrastructure and help retire many aging practices and timelines. Weis explained that the legacy infrastructure exposes the service to cybersecurity threats and other risks.
In August, Leidos assumed the responsibility for operating three shore-based DON networks. The company will use artificial intelligence and virtual lab operations for the modernization of Navy and Marine Corps networks.
“With this contract, the Navy is moving closer to enterprise networks that can more rapidly develop, test and deploy new mission-critical technologies while maintaining the highest levels of cybersecurity,” a Leidos senior vice president said.
Other 2021 goals are making data more accessible to support multidomain operations and ensuring that the cloud infrastructure is long-lasting to streamline capabilities delivery.
In October, a joint memo from the DON CIO and assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition outlines measures to transition to naval enterprise IT services.
The Navy seeks to advance capability development, delivery, and management in support of warfighters by creating and implementing secure IT services across the enterprise.
“The initial use cases for enterprise IT services review include but are not limited to collaboration and productivity; Identity, Credential, and Access Management; Model Based System Engineering capabilities; cloud platform services; and data analytics services,” the memo reads.
In the same month, Weis revealed that the office has started launching identity and access management across the DON by leveraging the Navy enterprise resource planning system that has 75,000 users. “All will be live imminently on the Navy’s identity service.”
The ICAM platform employs zero trust principles that take into account user identity, location and devices and other factors before enabling access to information.
Weis was the keynote speaker during GovCon Wire’s Navy: IT Transformation Forum. The DON CIO and other industry and federal leaders discussed the service branch’s initiatives and challenges as it moves to transform its IT infrastructure.
Executive Mosaic congratulates Aaron Weis and the Department of the Navy team for their selection to receive the 2022 Wash100 Award. Weis’ strong leadership and innovative solutions have cemented his footprint in the government contracting sector and driven modernization across the federal government.
About the Wash100 Award
This year represents the ninth annual Wash100 award selection. The Wash100 is the premier group of private and public sector leaders selected by Executive Mosaic’s organizational and editorial leadership as the most influential leaders in the GovCon sector.
These leaders demonstrate skills in leadership, innovation, reliability, achievement, and vision. Visitors to wash100.com can sign in and vote for the executives they believe will have the greatest impact on government contracting in the coming year.
