5 questions with Mr. Guckert

Ross Guckert, our program executive officer, discussed changes PEO EIS is making to support the Army’s digital transformation strategy.

How is PEO EIS changing the way it does business?
Digital transformation of the Army means transformation within EIS. We must adapt and change to meet the Army’s needs.

Our pivot to Agile, adoption of commercial best practices and data centricity will enable us to deliver capabilities faster and create a better user experience for Soldiers.

We established a new Chief Information Office this year to better align with Assistant Secretary of the Army (Acquisition, Logistics and Technology) priorities.

Mike Chappell, our incoming chief information officer, will join PEO EIS in late March. The Chief Information Office Directorate will include Mike and three sub-directorates: cloud, cybersecurity and data.

What principles guide PEO EIS when delivering capabilities?
You’ve heard other senior leaders say, “Acquisition is a team sport.” I couldn’t agree more.

Delivering capability is at the core of what every PEO is designed to do. That is my laser focus: deploying enterprise capabilities and systems to Soldiers so they can perform their mission.

We must know our audience and be responsive to stakeholders. We have many customers. How we treat relationships, including those with our industry partners, reflects on us as an organization. The PEO EIS culture supports collaboration and responsiveness.

We must be consistent in everything we do — how we organize, how we contract, how we execute and how we deliver.

We must leverage the best pathways and strategies to enable Agile, iterative and rapid delivery. It’s about delivering capability that is embraced by the user. Our customers’ user experience must be intuitive, easy to navigate, automated and require very few key strokes.

We must be good shepherds of taxpayers’ money. We need to be efficient and innovative to meet customers’ needs in a budget-constrained environment.

We must ensure discipline in all we do. That doesn’t mean we don’t take risks. It doesn’t mean we don’t tailor programs or documentation. It does mean delivering good products. If we push products outside the organization, those products represent EIS, and we take pride and ownership in them.

What is your new deputy PEO focused on right now?
Bill Hepworth joined PEO EIS in December. He will play a key role in our transformation to Agile.

We can’t execute our plans and strategies without the right skill sets in our workforce. Bill leads our Talent Management Board. He will help us have the right resources and skill sets in the right place to optimize mission success. He will make sure we have the right balance of mission to manpower.

A certified Scrum Master and expert in the Agile framework, Bill brings a wealth of industry experience and insights to EIS. I am excited to have him as a teammate on our journey to taking EIS to the next level as a world-class IT organization.

What initiatives is your assistant PEO (APEO) leading?
Lee James, our sole APEO, performs a critical role. He is our lead change agent responsible for integrating and synchronizing programs across the entire organization. What exactly does that mean? As our digital transformation journey continues, we must do our part to evolve the business of acquisition and integration of program management offices. The APEO has a principal role in that shift in terms of shaping that shared vision and aligning capabilities and outcomes across product lines. This includes facilitating communication across product-delivery efforts with our chartered program managers to ensure proper stakeholder alignment, adequate resources and Agile delivery of capabilities. It also includes engagement, when necessary, with Army senior leaders.

The Army’s Identity, Credential and Access Management (ICAM) effort is a good example of this integration effort. At EIS, we are both a service provider, within our Enterprise Services (ES) portfolio, and a consumer of ICAM capabilities. We are accountable for delivering ICAM and ensuring that application owners implement it in their programs. It’s crucial that we understand our intra-dependencies and risks, synchronize our efforts and collectively execute our programs aligned to that end state.

Lee will play a vital role in our ongoing transformation. He will also drive efficiencies, remove stovepipes and apply standardized practices across the organization.

What are you looking forward to in 2023?
2023 promises to be an exciting year for our portfolio as we deliver more capabilities into the hands of Army Soldiers and civilians.

Integrated Enterprise Network continues Secret Internet Protocol Router, voice and network modernization activities to support the Unified Network.

ES will deliver ICAM solutions.

Integrated Personnel and Pay System – Army will support Release 3 and adopt an Agile framework for future capabilities (what we used to call Release 4).

Enterprise Business Systems – Convergence will award its first prototypes.

Army Contract Writing System, Army Training Information System and Global Force Information Management will deliver capabilities.

We will establish a Foreign Military Sales – Army Case Execution System product office inside the Defense Integrated Business Systems portfolio and create an Enterprise-ICAM product office inside the ES portfolio.

Thanks to all these developments, the appointment of our new deputy PEO, the introduction of our new chief information officer and our ongoing digital transformation, EIS is truly becoming a world-class IT organization — one that I am very humbled to lead.