Air Force mulling chief data officer position

The Air Force plans to expand the ranks of its digital-domain leadership by adding a new chief data officer position, the service's chief information security officer said today.

Peter Kim told reporters at a June 7 Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association breakfast in Washington that the Air Force is in the early stages of appointing a CDO, after service leadership directed outgoing Chief Information Officer Lt. Gen. Bill Bender to do so.

That position would focus on improving the Air Force's data collection, processing and dissemination efforts as the service shifts to prioritize how information is used, rather than the platforms that collect the data.

"A lot of the efforts initially, from what I understand, are 'How do we take all these massive amounts of data and information and make it into some actionable information?'" Kim told Inside Defense regarding how the CDO's job would differ from existing leadership. "What are the right moves for different personnel career fields, are we manning at the right rates, where are some of the projections in the future that we've got to look out for, for certain critical career fields? . . . There's applications across the Air Force for mission kind of stuff and also for security."

Maj. Gen. B.J. Shwedo, who served as head of the 25th Air Force under Air Combat Command, will also take on a new role as chief information officer starting Friday, Kim said. Shwedo was nominated to the chief information officer job as a lieutenant general in April and will also serve as information dominance chief.

Kim added the Air Force may announce in the next few months how it plans to internally reorganize its cyber personnel. However, he doesn't expect the congressional directive to separate U.S. Cyber Command from U.S. Strategic Command would require the Air Force to restructure its own cyber forces. The Fiscal Year 2017 National Defense Authorization Act tells the Pentagon to establish CYBERCOM as a separate combatant command instead of operating as a sub-unified command, but it is still unclear when that might unfold.

"I think CYBERCOM will just kind of directly report to the SECDEF and I think that'll be it," Kim said. "All the cyber components just move with CYBERCOM."