UNITED STATES AIR FORCE
“ WHEN IT COMES TO FUTURE WAR FIGHTING AND ESPECIALLY FUTURE DETERRENCE , IT ’ S ALL ABOUT THE DIGITAL REALM ” LAUREN KNAUSENBERGER CIO , US AIR FORCE
Modular jets Chaillan ’ s history is the antithesis of the department ’ s size , structure and way of working . His companies were built fast and small , with all eyes on the exit strategy . “ Everything ,” he admits , “ is different .”
That meant he had to hit the ground running . Despite some progress prior to his arrival , there was still a waterfall approach to project management , a dearth of agile culture and a legacy pathway to talent requirements and acquisition . Chaillan accelerated DevSecOps to introduce a continuous engineering model where software would be delivered multiple times a day , rather than once every three to five years , in order to address issues in real time .
USAF is starting to embrace its newfound technological focus and the possibilities it affords . Key to this , Chaillan thinks , is the realization that hardware and software should be decoupled to allow for rapid delivery of prototypes . Effectively , this means taking a modular approach where , for example , aircraft sensors can be swapped out to upgrade hardware without building a new jet .
EXECUTIVE BIO
LAUREN KNAUSENBERGER
TITLE : CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER INDUSTRY : MILITARY LOCATION : WASHINGTON
Lauren Knausenberger has been with the US Air Force in a number of guises , joining as Director of Cyberspace Innovation in 2017 before becoming Chief Transformation Officer two years later . Last August , she became Chief Information Officer . The new role is , in Knausenberger ’ s typically no-nonsense words , “ really , really hard .” More stakeholders to manage , more complexity and problem solving across the board , for everyone , at scale .
“ Sometimes we ’ re deploying too many to too many different environments . As the CIO , I look at that and make sure we have a really robust cloud environment and that we ’ re putting in place the right incentives to make sure people are using that enterprise environment so we don ’ t have development teams that have to maintain 20 different baselines .
“ I have to make sure it ’ s global infrastructure in one place that everybody can access , so I ’ m looking at the whole tech stack at this point , rather than just the fun stuff at the top .”