Navy IT chief Halvorsen named acting DOD CIO
The appointment comes two weeks after Teri Takai’s resignation.
Terry Halvorsen, the Navy’s chief information officer, will take over as the Defense Department’s acting CIO on May 21.
Halvorsen has been running Navy and Marine Corps IT management since November 2010, being credited with cost-cutting and finding new efficiencies. Prior to that position, he served as deputy commander of Navy Cyber Forces and as deputy commander of Naval Network Warfare Command.
The announcement was made in a memo from Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work May 13, two weeks after the resignation of former DOD CIO Teri Takai. Dave DeVries, DOD Deputy CIO for Information Enterprise, has been serving as interim acting CIO.
One of Takai’s priorities has been DOD’s move toward the Joint Information Environment, the goal of which is interoperable cloud-based networks and services capable of delivering secure voice, intelligence, and data across the department. Takai was also responsible for the move from military-specific security accreditation standards to the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Risk Management Framework, which is used by the rest of the government.
JIE is something the Navy has been slow to on under Halvorsen. The initial push for JIE concerned the services moving to DOD Enterprise Email (DEE), a secure cloud-based email service intended to run across all of the services. But DEE has only been fully adopted by the Army and partially, so far, by the Air Force. The Navy and Marine Corps have yet to adopt the enterprise system due in part to cost concerns in moving from its own enterprise email, the Navy-Marine Corps Intranet. NMCI was poised to be replaced by the Navy’s Next Generation Enterprise Network.
Halvorsen has said that the service is committed to the JIE transition, but that the Navy wants to first address concerns about security, costs, and standards for interoperability. The Navy has been conducting a business case analysis on the viability of the transition.
Halvorsen’s appointment as acting CIO does not necessarily mean that he will permanently take on the job, according to DOD officials.
“This is just the first part of a much bigger process,” a Pentagon spokeswoman said, as reported by Navy Times.