AI leadership at The United States Defense Information Systems Agency

The Partnership for Public Service AI Center for Government™ is publishing a series of blogs to celebrate how AI and intelligent automation are being used in government to serve the public.  

Recently, we had the opportunity to interview Katrina Logan, director, (J1) Manpower & Personnel Directorate at the United States Defense Information Systems Agency, to learn how AI is being used to support DISA operations. 

What problems are you and your team trying to solve?

“DISA has a highly technical mission in support of global military operations. This requires IT and cyber expertise that is scarce and in high demand. We need to enable an efficient, scalable means to do the following: 

• Verify that candidates have the skills to accomplish the actual tasks associated with key roles for our mission. 
• Assess the strengths and areas for development for our key technical roles in support of our Department of War data centers and hybrid cloud services. 
• Establish and verify a successor pool that ensures technical redundancy to ensure agency readiness, regardless of the challenge. 
• Evolve our skills over time to meet the current threat and technical landscape. 

These challenges drove our desire to leverage AI to develop a skills-based assessment that can be easily deployed, evolved and expanded across the agency.” 

Did you build, rent or buy your solution? How was that choice made?  

“We chose to build. DISA has invested to ensure the agency is able to innovate to deliver relevant capabilities for our military. As such, our chief technology officer has invested in an inhouse large language model – ‘DISA Concierge’ for the agency to leverage for such purposes.” 

Who did you partner with? How do you open the door to cross-agency problem solving with AI?  

“We partnered with our emerging technology team to assist us in developing an application and train AI agents. We partnered with learning officers and functional subject matter experts within our Hosting and Cloud Compute directorate (J-9), who have done a lot of work to define the job series that fall within our ‘technician of the future’ career path, and to identify the functions, competencies and skills necessary to do the work of that mission set.” 

How did you train your team to understand the role of AI in their daily work? 

“I tasked my plans team to begin mapping a way forward for educating, experimenting and implementing AI efficiencies across DISA’s HR functions: 

• They stood up an AI working group, bringing together a cross-section of volunteers to begin exploring viable projects and learning together. 
• They have established [an internal] channel that is sharing information, tips, news and ideas for leveraging AI in HR. 
• They have also begun exploring how to parse applications to narrow the scope of candidates for positions. They have some work to do in this area, but they are learning as they make their way through the challenge. It is a real-world problem that holds the possibility of impacting how we do a critical function of our work. I’m sure they will be successful and learn a lot along the way. 

I also saw the importance of sending my project lead for the DISA AI working group to the Partnership for Public Service’s GovHR conference for the targeted purpose of learning from leaders and other colleagues in federal, state and local government [about] leveraging AI. My employee will offer brownbag lunch and learns for the rest of the staff to transfer the knowledge gained during the conference.” 

As a leader, who are the champions you have engaged to implement your initiative? 

“The DISA director is a huge advocate for innovation in the agency and has paved the way for leadership to take bold steps to apply AI to our mission. DISA CTO has invested in AI to support the mission. DISA J-9 deputy was critical in accessing their work in defining the skills relevant to their subject-matter expertise. Together, we’ve leaned forward and will continue to apply AI to our internal HR functions and processes were feasible.” 

How do you encourage technical and non-technical experts to collaborate in the development and use of AI tools? 

“AI is a technical powerhouse that is only realized when applied with a thorough understanding of the jobs to be done. If you can spark the interest in your non-technical SMEs, they will enable your technical superheroes to truly deliver solutions that can transform your agency. I’ve communicated the advantages of this technology and with responsible implementation and use, the technology will further empower our workforce and increase efficiency in how we perform and provide HR support and delivery. 

You’ve got to find at least one catalyst who buys into your vision. It helps if they are non-technical, have the capacity and drive to bring together others to share in that vision and expand their learning for what is possible. Being early adapters of the AI era and technical landscape is essential to both near and long-term adoption.” 

What is a recent success your team has celebrated? 

“I [recently] demonstrated the Technician of the Future AI Skills Assessment at our senior leader offsite to our director and colleagues, which was positively received and sparked broad conversation about further applications…to improve efficiencies across the agency.” 

Continuing the conversation  

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