Today, the Department of Defense (DoD) releases the Fulcrum: DoD Information Technology (IT) Advancement Strategy. This strategy will continue the transformative change in the Department’s IT; Cyber; Command, Control, and Communications; and digital workforce while setting the foundation for the future.
On June 20th, the Deputy Secretary of Defense approved and signed the Fulcrum Strategy, emphasizing the user-centric and a cross cutting approach, it will ensure the Department delivers capabilities aligned with warfighting mission objectives. This new strategy prioritizes user experience and investment in infrastructure that is both agile and scalable to meet the dynamic requirements of operations and opportunities offered by the most modern technologies.
The Fulcrum Strategy is organized across four integrated lines of effort (LOE) that will ensure the Department continues to connect, protect, and perform for the nation’s warfighters and the personnel that support them.
- Line of Effort 1 - Provide Joint Warfighting IT Capabilities: This LOE delivers user-centric IT capabilities that are functional, scalable, sustainable, and secure in today’s dynamic and contested global environments. This LOE focuses on improving the information available to the warfighter in order to gain decision and competitive advantage in high-tempo, multi-domain operations.
- Line of Effort 2 - Modernize Information Networks and Compute: This LOE focuses on rapidly meeting mission and business needs, leveraging best-in-class technologies and data-centric Zero Trust cybersecurity approach to deliver a secure modernized network that has faster data transfer, lower latency, with improved global dynamic resiliency.
- Line of Effort 3 - Optimize IT Governance: This LOE will drive efficiencies in capability delivery and enable cost avoidance and savings, transforms governance through streamlined policies from governance to acquisition of systems. This includes the use of robust data capabilities to empower better decision making.
- Line of Effort 4 - Cultivate a Premier Digital Workforce: This LOE will ensure that our workforce is ready to deploy emerging technology supporting the warfighter, and DoD continues ongoing efforts to identify, recruit, develop, and retain the best digital talent the country has to offer. It broadens the DoD Cyber Workforce Framework (DCWF) to focus on the greater digital workforce with the inclusion of work roles for data, AI, and software engineering.
Fulcrum describes "what" the DoD must achieve with respect to advancing IT for the warfighter and "why" it matters. Each LOE is supported by a series of portfolio spanning strategic objectives that describe the way ahead in greater detail and provide measurable mechanisms to track progress.
This strategy serves as the fulcrum for empowering DoD leaders to drive transformative change and advance technology for the warfighter in an evolving world. The strategy is available at https://dodcio.defense.gov/Portals/0/Documents/Library/FulcrumAdvStrat.pdf.