“We have 1.3 million users right now,” Pentagon CIO Kirsten Davies told Nextgov/FCW, describing the rapid uptake of GenAI.mil inside the Department of War.
Davies’ four transformation pillars
Davies framed her office’s work as a deliberate pivot from policy-making toward operational effect. She outlined four pillars guiding the Office of the CIO: an “enduring digital foundation” that modernizes network transport and data centers — “from undersea to celestial, so satellites and everything in between”; “agile digital capabilities,” explicitly rejecting “fast waterfall” in favor of industry-standard agile software practices; “cybersecurity of the warfighting ecosystem,” expanding focus to operational technology (OT) and the internet of things; and “upskilling, cross-skilling, and partnering,” which includes closer work with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the FBI, and the National Security Agency.
GenAI.mil: scale, savings, and vendor ties
GenAI.mil is central to Davies’ argument that automation can free personnel for higher-value work. She said the platform has more than 1.3 million users and “over 100,000 agents that have been built by users,” and that in some cases a task that once took two weeks can now be completed in two hours. Davies also announced partnerships with eight AI companies to deploy their tools on classified networks, presenting that move as evidence of “acquisition reform in motion.”
Operational technology and the OT council
Davies emphasized that “everything is connected” and described OT as a mix of building management systems and the “critical infrastructure that supports our installations here in America and abroad.” To address OT risk, she said the office is “setting up an OT council” that will bring together industry expertise, department use cases, and defense industrial base partners to craft solutions and improve availability, resiliency and security from the core “all the way to the edge.”
Acquisition reform: RMF, ATO inheritance, and reducing barriers
To speed acquisition and procurement, Davies said her office is refining the risk-management framework (RMF) and overhauling the Authorization to Operate (ATO) process. She argued approvals do not currently “necessarily transfer over to another part of the department,” and said the office will pursue automation and “inheritance of one [Authorization to Operate] to another ATO.” That work is presented as part of a broader effort to “reduce barriers to entry” for the defense industrial base and move away from “compliancy and check-the-box exercises to get at meaningful outcomes.”
Workforce change: skills-based hiring and lifecycle support (Katie Sutton)
On staffing, Davies said the president and the secretary have mandated an emphasis on skills-based training. She described a push to “eliminate the requirement for degrees before people can get a job” and to pursue a “full life-cycle approach” to skills-based hiring, cross-skilling and upskilling. Davies said she is working with Katie Sutton, the assistant secretary of war for cyber policy, on that full life-cycle model and on ensuring veterans transitioning out of service are trained to continue supporting the national-security mission.
What this means for service members, the defense industrial base, and cybersecurity teams
- Service members and field operators: Expect faster delivery of software and edge use cases, and an emphasis on data and “availability, resiliency and security” from the core to the edge to support readiness.
- Defense industrial base and AI vendors: The department is signaling reduced entry barriers and is already moving to host commercial AI tools on classified networks, while seeking “inheritance” in ATOs to avoid repeated approvals across components.
- Cybersecurity teams and OT managers: OT will be elevated alongside IT, with an OT council intended to coordinate industry and departmental use cases and to treat OT as distinct from IT rather than neglect it.
Davies cast the office’s work as aligned with leadership direction from President Donald Trump and Secretary Pete Hegseth to prioritize speed, technology leadership, and “reducing operational risk.” She said the CIO team is coordinating with the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (under Emil Michael, undersecretary of defense for research and engineering), and with Undersecretary of War for Acquisition and Sustainment Mike Duffey’s shop, to fuse acquisition, AI, and enterprise modernization at pace.
The immediate, concrete steps Davies identified are familiar and specific: scale GenAI.mil and its vendor integrations, stand up an OT council, refine RMF rules and ATO inheritance to reduce redundant approvals, and roll out a skills-based hiring and lifecycle workforce model. Those moves map directly onto her stated aim: shift the Office of the CIO “away from being just a policy shop” and toward delivering tools, security, and training that “enable and empower our warfighters.”
