Editor’s note: Sharon Woods was named Government Cloud Executive of the Year on Nov. 12.
The finalists for WashingtonExec’s Pinnacle Awards were announced Oct. 8, and we’ll be highlighting some of them until the event takes place virtually Nov. 12.
Next up is Government Cloud Executive of the Year finalist Sharon Woods, who’s executive director and program manager for the Cloud Computing Program Office in the Defense Department’s Office of the Chief Information Officer. Here, she talks key achievements, future focus areas and rule-breaking.
What key achievements did you have in 2019/2020?
The Cloud Computing Program Office accomplished two historic achievements in 2019/2020 that advanced cloud solutions to solve critical Department challenges. With the JEDI cloud contract awarded in October 2019, CCPO drove deployment of unclassified cloud services for the enterprise.
While litigation paused the contract, CCPO accomplished major achievements in those first three months. CCPO achieved provisional authorization of over 70 services for unclassified JEDI cloud in three weeks.
The speed of this accomplishment for such a broad scope of cloud services is unprecedented. Critical for the warfighter, the PA included first-of-its-kind, cloud-based tactical edge devices. The tactical edge devices are portable, modular devices capable of hosting cloud services even when disconnected from the central cloud environment.
Imagine a submerged submarine gathering underwater sensor data and, for the first time ever, being able to run machine learning algorithms by using tactical edge devices. In only three months, CCPO proved that rapid, enterprise authorizations for commercial cloud services are possible.
Also, in March 2020, I led DOD’s effort — known as Commercial Virtual Remote — to deploy Microsoft Teams to over 1 million DOD users. CCPO worked tirelessly around the clock to design and deliver CVR to the entire DOD workforce. IT efforts of this scale typically take upward of 2 years, but we met the challenge and deployed CVR in three weeks.
CCPO aggressively attacked the status quo within the department to champion a new way of acquiring, implementing and delivering cloud services for the entire DOD during the National Emergency Declaration. CVR transformed collaboration across the department in order to maintain force readiness during COVID-19. Never in DOD’s history have people, regardless of service or component, been able to instantaneously work together through chat, video, and document collaboration.
Today, CVR stands as the largest Microsoft Teams deployment in the world, servicing over 1 million department personnel and has been an operations game-changer throughout the DOD.
What are you most proud of having been a part of in your current organization?
I am proudest of the team I built in the CCPO. When I became the program manager in October 2018, CCPO had one other employee. Today, CCPO is 50+ people strong. My vision for CCPO was of an integrated, cross-functional team where everyone is empowered and motivated to try new things and drive change. I personally recruited and interviewed almost everyone in CCPO. Personality fit was as important as technical acumen. I worked hard to create a culture where everyone thrived.
In CCPO, the best idea prevails regardless of seniority. Employees do not hold back because failures are embraced. And while we are driven and committed to deploying cloud to DOD, the team’s welfare and families comes first.
Everyone in CCPO is unique, quirky and exceptional. Together, we accomplish feats that have never been done before in DOD, like creating the largest Microsoft Teams deployment in the world in under 30 days.
CCPO is the office of choice for solving the department’s most important cloud technology challenges in support of the warfighter. I am proudest of bringing together and nurturing a group of people that are transforming the Department everyday.
What are your primary focus areas going forward, and why are those so important to the future of the nation?
We have to crack the nut of not just change, but enduring change. There are multiple innovation hubs across the department and federal government. These offices are critical to bringing in new ideas and showing folks a new way forward. I have been a part of innovation offices and believe strongly in their value.
The challenge, however, is translating that innovation across the department so that modern technology and agile processes are ubiquitous — not just limited to offices that are already more advanced.
In the beginning, my focus was on standing up an office of exceptional people that run toward hard problems. Now, my focus is harnessing CCPO’s momentum so that everyone benefits — not just offices already on the path.
In my opinion, enduring change requires a willingness to tackle the less-exciting technology challenges like unified cloud identity and cloud accelerators, such as pre-accredited cloud templates. Deploying a new product can be exciting, but the impact of a new product is localized. The impact of solving for fundamental, underlying problems, like unified cloud identity, is a game changer.
Fragmented identity is a huge problem for DOD. Imagine an Army soldier that over a period of 5 or 6 years goes from an Army office, to Central Command, and then to a Joint Office. Each of those offices has their own cloud tenants and, without unified cloud identity, that soldier has three different identities.
There is no traceability across those tenants without running manual processes. You cannot apply machine learning security tools against that soldier’s activities across all of those environments. Issues like insider threat get infinitely compounded when you have a single person operating across multiple cloud environments, but no ability to continuously monitor and audit that person’s activity across those environments.
CCPO is focused on those kinds of fundamental problems that affect everyone attempting to move to the cloud at any layer as a service — infrastructure, platform or software. I want to achieve enduring enterprise change — not just solving particular mission sets, but also impacting the mission across the board.
Which rules do you think you should break more as a government/industry leader?
I want to break the rules and norms about where employees must be located. Modernizing technology in the federal government requires great people. Location should be irrelevant. I want to break that federal government rule/norm completely.
In DOD, the duty station for an office is based on its physical location. Job vacancies are posted in USAJOBS for the specific location of that duty station. Under the current rules and norms, if a federal employee is working, but not physically located in the office that day, he/she is teleworking, usually from home. Many argue, especially within a COVID-19 context, that the federal government needs to use telework, or remote work, more. I think we need to take it a step further.
The idea of telework is antiquated in my opinion. Location should be irrelevant, especially for technology offices. People are working, or they are not working. Maybe they are in the office, maybe at home, maybe a different city, or maybe even a different country. It shouldn’t matter where a person is located. A job posting in USAJOBS should be able to be designated as global. I think having a physical office(s) is important, but it shouldn’t restrict employees’ locations.
DOD runs a global mission and has a global presence. Offices should be free to hire people from around the world. Location has to stop being such a limitation on accessing talent and diversity.
What’s the biggest professional risk you’ve ever taken?
The biggest professional risk I’ve ever taken was leaving behind my profession and taking on a program that other seasoned program managers avoided because of the controversy and pressure.
For 10 years, I served as a federal acquisition attorney and built a reputation for being skilled and effective. DOD OGC twice by-name requested that I serve as the lead attorney for two different programs personally monitored by the Secretary. Retiring the attorney mantle was never part of my plan — at all.
On a Monday in October 2018, DOD leadership asked me to run JEDI and become the PM for CCPO. I was completely shocked. I had no formal executive training. I had no prior experience as a PM. Both are a huge deal in the department. But for DOD CIO Dana Deasy and Principal Deputy CIO Essye Miller, the absence of official credentials was not a show stopper.
I chose to be an attorney in the federal government, as opposed to a private practice, to serve. I do what I do because of the mission. For reasons that probably made little sense to most outsiders, I knew I could do this job. I believed that I could make a greater difference as CCPO’s PM rather than a DOD attorney. On the Friday of that same week, the DOD CIO signed my appointment letter. I haven’t looked back since. I found my calling, and it’s the most crazy, incredible thing.