WASHINGTON \u2014 After a year-long push to rationalize its previously uncoordinated AI efforts, the Defense Intelligence Agency is institutionalizing its new, more centralized and more efficient approach, the DIA\u2019s chief AI officer said Thursday.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the things that we were serious about was getting out capabilities quickly,\u201d said Maj. Gen. Robert Kinney<\/a> at SCSP\u2019s ai+intelligence<\/a> conference here. \u201c[When] I talk to the team \u2026 I reinforce this frequently: I want you to move like somebody\u2019s on your heels, and they\u2019re about ready to eat you.\u201d<\/p>\n Those reforms include a new \u201chub-and-spoke\u201d organization centered around the Digital Modernization Accelerator (DMA), created on March 1 as the permanent incarnation of the ad hoc Task Force Sabre<\/a>, Kinney said. Nicknamed the \u201cMaverick Accelerator,\u201d it is already helping the DIA consolidate scarce expertise and push out technical support \u2014 not just to the agency\u2019s own directorates, Kinney said, but also to the four-star theater Combatant Commands<\/a> around the world.<\/p>\n Kinney, officially DIA\u2019s mobilization assistant, was tapped as chief AI officer by then-director<\/a> Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse<\/a>. \u201cI found out pretty quickly was that we had a number of AI initiatives underway, but \u2026 they were bespoke capabilities [and\/or] siloed,\u201d Kinney recounted. \u201cI told him [Kruse] \u2026 \u2018we\u2019re at risk if we don\u2019t get this right, of driving ourselves into irrelevance in a short period of time.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n That dire report led DIA to stand up Task Force Sabre, a tight team of just 25 people with a 12-month mandate to jumpstart reform.<\/p>\n One tool Sabre embraced was contracting through the streamlined Other Transaction Authority<\/a> (OTA) process \u2014 a shortcut in wide use across the Defense Department, but something DIA had not done \u201cin years,\u201d Kinney said. By contrast, he went on, \u201cwe\u2019ve done in the last year, [through] Task Force Sabre, six OTAs. The last one went from RFI [Request For Information] to award in 40 days.\u201d<\/p>\n