David Wennergren

Navy
David Wennergren
Chief Information Officer

David Wennergren has spent two decades watching the Navy change. From his first stint in the Chief of Naval Operations office to his current post as Navy chief information officer, the department has undergone fundamental changes in the way it fights wars and, Wennergren's priority, the way it manages information. "We live in a network world," he says. And he should know. The Navy-Marine Corps Intranet, which is intended to provide a secure technology infrastructure, is the biggest IT services contract in government history. The network world, Wennergren says, gives the Navy a chance to move away from the stovepipe systems it has spent decades building and toward enterprisewide systems.

The Navy's size creates challenges for implementation, and NMCI has suffered more than the usual share. But size also creates opportunity, namely buying power, Wennergren says. Today, the Navy is negotiating licenses with large software vendors such as Oracle. As with reducing the number of networks, enterprise deals help the Navy scale back the number of contracts it has to manage.

Wennergren thinks the role of the CIO is changing, not just in the Navy. "The idea of cultural change is at the heart of everything a CIO does these days," he says, noting that adopting technology is only part of what information officers do. "The heart and soul . . . is helping their organizations to transform" into modern operations, he says. "It's all about people."

Wennergren has a long technology tenure in the Navy. Before taking his current post, he was deputy CIO for enterprise integration and security, and helped lead the service's efforts in process reengineering, knowledge management and Year 2000 preparations. From 1985 until 1992, he worked in the Office of the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations (Logistics), where he eventually headed the Plans and Policy Branch in the Shore Installation Management Division.