Three questions with Gary Winkler, Army PEO EIS

Gary Winkler is the Program Executive Officer for Army Enterprise Information Systems, which is responsible for AKO/DKO and is one of the largest procurement PEO’s within the Army’s Team C4ISR.

Winkler sat down with Defense Systems Editor in Chief Wyatt Kash and contributing editor Barry Rosenberg to answer some questions at the PEO EIS booth on the tradeshow floor at LandWarNet 2009.

DS: What have you seen or heard at LandWarNet this year that has caught your attention?

Winkler: What I’ve seen that is different this year is the integration between products and technology. Last year you didn’t see as much information technology capability on vehicles, for example. I’m starting to see a blending of IT platforms and capabilities. I’m seeing more complete end-to-end solutions.

DS: Are you hearing any new leadership direction coming from the keynote speeches this year?

Winkler: The collaborative space is a new area where technology is taking us. For example, people are writing applications for Go Mobile (the mobile initiative by the Army Knowledge Online Web site team) like they do for the iPhone, and are tapping into soldiers in a real-time manner. Last year we didn’t have Go Mobile capability with a PDA. The question is: how do we in the Army quickly improve those applications and make sure there is no malicious code? Policies and regulations have to catch up with the state of technology that is available now.

DS: What’s at the top of the pile of work waiting for you when you go back to the office?

Winkler: Budgets have fallen off the cliff. The peak year for Army budgets was 2008, and it is quickly going back to early 2000-level funding. My goal at EIS is to return money to the Army to use for other things. We can do our enterprise resource planning systems more cost effectively. For example, we buy the whole, robust SAP ERP (enterprise resource planning) product for finance and logistics. We can then stub out parts of that code so it doesn’t have all of its functionality (where it’s not needed). At some point in the lifecycle of those programs we want to bring those ERP systems together, and, instead of fielding the next version of the logistics ERP by itself, for example, we’ll [integrate] it with the finance ERP and (SAP ERP modules). In the next couple of years we’ll begin to collapse different ERP systems. There’s about $6 billion left to spend in the lifecycle of those ERP systems, and if we can save 20 percent then we can return over $1 billion to the Army.