CIO Profiles: Jeffrey Sorenson, Lieutenant General And CIO, United States Army

Career Track

How long at current position: Since November 2007

Most important career influencers: My father, Richard Sorenson, taught me to have balance in my life and to trust the people in my organization. Lt. Gen. Bill Campbell and Maj. Gen. Bill Harmon taught me the importance of humility as a leader, integrity, and the need to look at the lighter side. And Maj. Woody Goldberg taught me to always challenge the status quo and assess the second- or third-order consequences of any strategic decision.

If I could do it all over again, I would ... press harder for quicker, incremental deliverables.

Vision

Advice for other government IT pros: Synchronize with business process improvements to lead business reengineering.

The next big thing for the Army's IT: We are reshaping the Army's existing network and battle command components. In 2010, we'll also award contracts for new data centers and enterprise messaging and collaboration. And in early 2010, we'll launch a program for Army soldiers and civilians to submit network applications that will be considered for use by warfighters. Those whose apps are implemented will be awarded with cash and recognition.

The key to managing an IT budget is ... inventory and assessment, risk/gap analysis, and prioritizing for enterprise and technical deployments.

On The Job

IT budget: $9.97 billion. The Army is the single largest customer for Microsoft, Dell, MPC, and Linux, and among the top five for Hewlett-Packard.

Size of IT team: CIO's office has approximately 400, and Netcom/ 9th Signal Command is a direct reporting command with approximately 17,000.

Top initiatives:

>> The Global Network Enterprise Construct is a strategy to ensure the Army and mission partners have the right information at the right time and the right place, including the ability to use the network to deploy and fight on arrival.

>> In 2010, the Army will launch an Army Cyber Command to support the new U.S. Cyber Command. It will be a new hybrid organization that includes network defense, attack, and exploitation.

>> We are developing, implementing, and enforcing Army and federal data standards across the Army. The goal is to leverage the power of authenticated information through an agile enterprise with freedom of maneuverability across the data environment.

How I measure IT effectiveness: Standardized tools provide persistent asset visibility and reporting, vulnerability scanning and compliance reporting, remediation, configuration management, security alerts, etc. We're using the Army Strategic Management System for a collaborative and automated way to report and review performance management metrics and data.

Personal

Colleges/degrees: Northwestern University, MBA; West Point, BS; registered certified public accountant in Illinois

Leisure activities: Golf, running, and reading

Best book read recently: The Future Of Management, by Gary Hamel

Personal IT tools: BlackBerry, iMac, Dell notebook, Twitter stream (as ArmyCIOG6), and the CIO/G-6 blog