The U.S. Marine Corps raised concerns that challenges that remain to implement a new information technology-as-a-Service contracting model, which will enable the service to move operations to contractors, FedScoop reported Friday. Officials said they intend to utilize the IT model to free up service members from basic commodity operations.
Moving such basic tasks to private companies would help marines focus on specialized cybersecurity operations. The model is in the experimental stage. However, the service branch wants to avoid moving too fast to avoid network problems during wartime, said Ken Bible, deputy chief information officer for the Marine Corps.Â
He cited one incident during the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, where marines faced logistical problems with contracting IT infrastructure. The CIO added that he’s still figuring out “where it makes sense†to implement IT-as-a-Service. Previously, the Pentagon issued the Joint Information Environment policy and Joint Regional Security Stack to help military services in consolidate disparate networks into a secure environment.Â
