thank you for joining us today my name is Matt Schmidt and I'm the servicenow's mission account manager for our Navy Marine Corps servicenow is a world-class automation engine helping out the dawn in both Mission and business operations the world works with servicenow Welcome to our session today entitled supporting the Warfighter today our fireside chat will be with Dave McDonald CIO plans and programs for Nick Tam's pack and we're going to explore a little bit how the commands approach to modernizing has been evolving to meet Mission needs and mandates Ms McDonald thank you for joining us today amen thank you and and call me Dave uh it's good to be um good to be online with you um and uh glad to have a chance to talk about uh some of our challenges with uh with data with services with applications and people in process is so excited to be here I appreciate you joining us sir if you wouldn't mind can you prize a little bit about your role in areas of responsibility over at Nick Tam's pack yeah sure um so so uh I am the command information officer the CIO and plans and programs director for the Navy computer and Telecommunications area master station Pacific um so so it's important right up front I say in this role um you know not not speaking from uh policy perch or programmatic or or resources perch for the Department of the Navy it's kind of a sidebar love to have conversations with industry also um I'll say Matt you'll appreciate this not not endorsing service now but um but we've really really enjoyed working with you guys for the last year uh and and look forward to doing some more of that um so in my role I uh I look across the Pacific hemisphere uh Nick Thames pack and our aligned organizations do Navy and Joint telecommunications I.T cyber defense and a few other things uh for for the Department of Defense for the war fighter on this this side of the world uh it spans the gamut from IP networks uh radio transmitter facilities messaging and and data application Services base communication Services a lot of that that stuff that's in the ground right fiber copper microwave across our bases and stations across the Pacific hemisphere so it's a big Enterprise and among the things I do is kind of look current and future at our missions systems resourcing and our overall Readiness to perform those missions for the Warfighter I appreciate that sir and that's that's excellent so I said you've been around technology give or take for over 40 plus years and I said we really wanted to get an understanding from you what challenges are you seeing in the nicknames pack landscape Now versus maybe say 10 years ago for modernization yeah so so the challenge is the challenges never never end so in my current role I've been up at Nick Thames for about 16 years uh but you know my career history goes back to being a you know deck plates um cryptologist on submarines at Mission operations at various field stations around the world so I've been in touch with technology for for that 40-year career so far um you know it's it's my perspective that you know you're kind of always in a perfect storm of change right uh but but in in certain times more more than others right I think I think we're in a stage now where there's this kind of exponential explosion of potential driven by so many factors in technology compute power uh you know bandwidth and network robustness resilience the the competitive factors in our economy and in the world economy um you know technology and research and development in in chips and um you know uh various form factors uh from Power Batteries uh Mobility um you know the ability to to bring the size weight and power of a lot of these form factors down to some really compelling uh levels uh such that you know ubiquity of Mobility ubiquity of high compute Services um is is kind of exploding right so so we're in this phase right now where where the dod the department of the Navy and so forth we got to think about making sure we can to use a nautical phrase can come up alongside of industry and and at least try to keep pace and not sort of watch you you know go up go out over the horizon and disappear from us you know as we we kind of cling to our Legacy uh capabilities from 10 15 20 years ago or more um so so we're in this we're really in this perfect storm of change with technology right now sounds like it sounds like it sounds you've got a lot going on out there um when you talk about sort of you know versus the way you've always done in the past like I said trying to to expand your horizon to go alongside industry can you can you give us some examples of that like you know when I look at this you know what type of issues um there were many manual processes in the past in the past that you're trying to go forward and say we need to stay on Pace with what industry is doing stay you know keep them in the horizon yeah I think I think there's some really key areas uh certainly that we care about in in our line of work uh provisioning telecommunications I.T and cyber defense Services across across this vast uh piece of geography that is the indo-pacific um so so I always like to go down stack right go down to layer one and transport the you know the first uh one two three layers of you know the classic OSI stack transport transport transport right bandwidth bandwidth bandwidth a long time ago a smart engineer taught me you know uh keep in mind McDonald as you go through your career whatever the question might be there's a great likely but that bandwidth is the answer so that's one key area of technology is you got to be able to move uh the information you got to be able to move the applications move the services move the data move these the security infrastructure in a way that doesn't doesn't collaborate the the user experience so so transport is a big deal whether it's commercial space 5G nextg other modalities even like li-fi and Laser and Optical free space Optical those Technologies really have compelling sort of aspect to them I think that that are going to set up as game changers for the things we have to do in the future you know if you get those things right Matt if you get trans transport and bandwidth and and communication Services right everything you aspire to do up stack in data applications Big Data uh security infrastructure zero trust all those things get get exponentially easier if the infrastructure is there so so I always kind of like to start there and in some ways remind a lot of our senior decision makers that you you better get transport right because all the other things you aspire to do rely upon that absolutely and I said having having the bandwidth allows everything else to move allowing you to take chance and be able to move some of this what I call manual type items moving to automation moving them forward from that path so and by the way Matt I include in that um just to use the term broadly um I include compute power right and and distributed compute power right Edge and distributed compute power that's all part of that kind of bandwidth equation I'm using the term sort of uh a little more broadly than a lot of people might think about it no I appreciate that thank you sir so how about if you can share with me an example of how you you've looked at sort of some of these processes you've got the bandwidth figured out you've got some of that uh pipe figured out you've got some of the compute power figured out what sort of processes are you looking at and say okay going out to your team say how do we modernize this how do we do this both from a people standpoint from a tool standpoint and then making sure that it's in place to keep moving forward yeah a great question uh there's lots to unpack there but I'll dial in on a couple things so so I love Innovation I love R D um we're we're very much a part of some very compelling r d and Innovation efforts but I'm also um a bit of a I'll call it a curmudgeonly um critic of the Valley of Death right of of so many research and development and Innovation and experimentation uh programs projects and platforms that all kind of systemically and very predictably you know fall their way into the valley of death so so I think to your question thinking about this uh broadly and completely about how do you leverage those game-changing uh real transformational Technologies how do you then put the leadership commitment the the resource and commitment and the staying power into it to navigate those things out of the Valley of Death uh field them sustain them man and train them uh adopt them in terms of your processes and your culture uh lead them and and sort of get the full return on investments of of the most transformational Technologies that's you know I I've said somewhat shooting for effect that you know anybody with a checkbook and a research lab behind them can do experimentation right you can do r d it takes it takes real gumption to figure out how to take the most successful experimental projects and then transform them into something at scale and then to adopt them broadly in an organization's Mission or Enterprises Mission and then deal with the human factors the sustainment tale the cyber security and information assurance compliance tale and all the other things you have to be able to do to sort of sort of achieve the real benefit of that investment over years right that's the hard part right and I'm I am sued for effect when I say anybody can do r d that's hard too but what's wickedly hard is scale sustainment and operational adoption and I look at when I hear you say that sir I think a lot about a lot of about how you do that with your people and I said how you're empowering your people to do to be able to get out and look over that ledge and say you know we need we need to be able to take that first step we need to build once we once we're going down these pilot phases once we're doing these types of work how do we take that second step and third step and so can you talk a little bit about how you Empower your department for change and how you Empower them to really modernize their cultural way of thinking to succeed and grow based on some of these challenges that you're seeing yeah so some of this is very nuanced and and tricky um other parts of it really really aren't is um you know to put a hopefully a kind of a rather simple point on it you kind of get what you invest in with in regard to that you know an organization that that wants to strike a really good balance between uh Innovation and you know kind of what I would think of as a user-centered designer spiral development or the term of the day is deaf secops or secops type of delivery of innovation but also balance that with a smart disciplined adoption you have to invest in that as an operational organization you have to invest in being sort of on the Ops side of devops if that makes sense Matty right and and you know it doesn't come for free right it takes work it takes leadership commitment and it takes a level of investment in having the sort of subject matter expertise uh you know close at hand that can really assist you and your entire Workforce with the smart adoption and integration of transformational Technologies you know a lot of people who nay say on this they will say those are disruptive Technologies and some mean it in a good way and and others say well you know the last thing we need right now is disruption right so so leaders have to make the investment in managing disruption managing that disruption to transformation and to achieving return on investment uh at Nick Tam's pack and across our Enterprise we have a dedicated Knowledge Management team that among their stock and trade you know sort of contribution to the organization they do this and we're we're continuously learning our way into how to be a smart adopter of transformational Technologies but you got to balance it with some discipline right absolutely and I said what I'm hearing you say a lot there sir is that how are you managing that gray how are you managing how are you teaching your folks to manage that gray as well because I said you know you're sending them off into the world and saying okay you know you've got you've you bring back some ideas you bring back some thoughts you bring back some change that that we can manage and we can use in our nicknames pack environment yeah and you know this uh because you know servicenow and some of your partner uh your partner industry uh players that bring certain applications and services within the servicenow ecosystem it is foundationally transformational what you deliver to your to your team to your clients and and your your uh customers and partners out there but you also know that quite often there's a lot of resistance you know an organization that's been been doing a certain thing a certain way for 10 12 15 years and suddenly you know you bring this really powerful new way of doing it and and uh you know they all look at the PowerPoint charts and they look at the demonstrations and say oh well you know there's vastly ways better ways of doing this you know but then the hard part hits right is people actually have to train they have to dig deep they have to think about jettisoning uh you know the Legacy capability you're turning their world upside down yeah right and so there's a whole leadership element cultural element of that of you know how do you persuade people kind of make your idea their idea um and and guide and lead the adoption of something uh truly powerful right and it's a commitment right it doesn't happen overnight yeah change is hard and it says hearts and Minds hearts and minds are that's right I appreciate you sharing a lot of this stuff sir I I really do um I know we're going to be coming up close on time here any closing thoughts I think I said on sort of the next steps for you over at nicktam's packs and and sort of how you're looking at evolving sport the Warfare in the future yeah I think you uh you you framed it um you know pretty well uh right up front as we started the conversation right people processes and tools and frankly kind of in that order right and I don't want to say the technology or the tools are you know just incidental to the thing all three of those are critically important to make transformation but people processes and tools if leaders think broadly and completely about those things and and strike that right balance between you know being up on the balls of your feet moving forward you know with Innovation and and real enthusiasm but also you know some discipline and you got to know when to go slow in some places as well take your time and bring people along uh you know if you're just bringing a bright shiny object into your Enterprise and the people in processes aren't coming along with it um you're going to waste money time and you're going to create cynicism so so that's how I think about this to get at your last question there is um to Steward these these uh change initiatives across people processes and tools and strike that balance between always looking forward to to Improvement continuous Improvement but to do it with some some discipline and some real thoughts right that's how I think about this for our Enterprise sir I I really appreciate your time and your partnership I wish you the best as you continue on your journey out there with Nick Tim's pack may you have Fair wins and following see sir thank you very much you're learning fast Matt you got more together you got the Navy rubric down very good we're training you well and you're training as well as as well so thank you thank you thank you sir