Meet the CIOs: Army

Army: Otto Guenther

OTTO J. GUENTHER
Army
107 Army Pentagon #3E458
Washington, D.C. 20310-0107
Phone: 703-697-7494
Fax: 703-695-3091
E-mail: otto.j.guenther@pentagon-1dms2.army.mil
Career Highlights:

1995-Present: Director of information systems for Command, Control, Communications and Computers (C4)
1964-95: Variety of Army positions, including commander of the Communications-Electronics command at Fort Monmouth

IT Budget (fiscal years):
1996: $1.9 billion
1997: $1.9 billion
1998: not available

Priority Projects:

• Information Security - implementing plans to protect telecommunications and computer systems from attack.
• Architectures - developing technical, operational and systems architectures to ensure interoperability and reduce costs.
• C4 Infrastructure - upgrading communications links between combat and support units.

Biggest Challenges:

"Putting in place policy and procedures for C4 investment planning, reengineering and performance measures, plus increasing information-management skills assessment and training. Also, we are now in the process of fixing our systems to ensure they are fully compliant before Jan. 1, 2000 rolls around. In addition, our Warfighting Information Network is an evolving, commercially based, information and communications architecture containing specific C4 components needed for our next generation of information warfare."

Management Approach:

"We recently reorganized our CIO organization to ensure that we have visibilty and clout in the Army and the DoD programming, planning, budgeting and acquisition processes. We are now developing an overall C4 strategic investment plan that we will use to obtain resources and measure performance of Army IT systems, services and facilities."

Hottest Technologies:

"Web-based products, which make large amounts of data available to both external and internal sources, will continue to grow and evolve. Web application development tools will make Web-page construction easier and faster, thus permitting better communications. Also, in the last 12 months, middleware products have emerged that enable us to reduce the production cycle for publishing information on the Web. The introduction of high-end multiprocessor servers is important because it will provide the computing power needed to allow successful fielding of data warehousing structures and applications, Web applications, modeling and simulation."