Defense Technical Information Center 

STRATEGIC PLAN 

FY 2023 to FY 2028

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DTIC FY 2023 to FY 2028 Strategic Plan

The Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC) is built 

around the imperative that when our Nation sends our military into 

harm’s way it is our responsibility to give them the tools to succeed 

and return home safely. Over the term of this five-year Strategic 

Plan, we will keep this responsibility at the forefront of our plans and 

actions. With the continued support of Office of the Under Secretary 

Defense for Research & Engineering (OUSD(R&E)), DTIC will 

improve our ability to preserve, curate, and share knowledge from 

Department of Defense’s (DoD) $16B/year investment in science 

and technology (S&T).

Current State and Limitations:

DTIC’s information technology (IT) readiness has been impacted by mission creep and the cost of state-of-the-art 

technologies in an environment of negative budget growth from 2010 to 2020. We have seen additional impacts from 

DoD network protections that added latency and blocked access, and contract structures that lack access to on demand 

cloud resources and robust failover, and access to key subject matter experts. Community content submission is spotty. 

Feedback includes the complexity of the submission system, lack of awareness of the requirement, and perceived 

lack of value in submission. Further, the current DTIC search has not kept pace with industry best practices, leverages 

multiple tools with inconsistent user interface and lacks analysis and visualization features our customers have come to 

expect in commercial environments. Data set management is new to DoD and our disconnected authoritative collections 

create complexities for discoverability, portability and content security for our customers.

Strategic Approach:

DTIC has initiated a major modernization and revitalization effort and 

will migrate into Air Force Cloud One and where available, leverage 

Software as a Service (SaaS) to reduce IT infrastructure and cybersecurity operations and maintenance costs. We will simplify and 

implement ecommerce technology in the submission pipeline and 

fully support bulk uploads from the Services systems. DTIC will 

develop comprehensive submission and usage metrics dashboards 

and work directly with R&E to promote submission advocacy with 

the Services. We will adopt the most current commercially available 

artificial intelligence (AI) enabled search solution in Cloud One, 

with advanced user interface and mobile device access. DTIC is 

establishing a dedicated analysis cell to provide users insights and 

trend prediction. We will leverage a cross-Service working group 

with DoD Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Officer (CDAO) and 

Advana on standards and best practices for building and sharing 

high quality AI-ready data sets.

MESSAGE 

FROM THE 

DTIC 

ADMINISTRATOR

“We will adopt the most current commercially 

available ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI)

enabled search solution in Cloud One...”
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Future State Vision: 

As we fully onboard Cloud One, DTIC will leverage high availability network connections, efficient downloads, on-demand 

compute and storage to execute machine learning (ML) driven analytics and visualizations, and commercial user tools. 

Fully integrated Service submission pipelines provide DTIC with the ability to notify Services of missing content as well 

as usage/reference statistics available to report to authors/submitters/senior leaders. AI-augmented commercial search 

will analyze user activity and provide recommendations and ML-driven interrogation of DTIC collections will discover 

insights not readily apparent using current analysis techniques. 

Christopher E. Thomas

Administrator
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DTIC FY 2023 to FY 2028 Strategic Plan

1. Introduction

1.1. Problem Statement 

1.2. Scope

2. Mission, Vision and Guiding Principles

2.1. Mission Statement

2.2. Vision Statement

2.3. Guiding Principles 

3. Essential Capabilities 

3.1. Talent and Culture 

3.2. Measured Process Improvement 

3.3. Cyber Operations

3.4. Advanced Analytics 

4. Goals and Objectives 

4.1. Goal 1: Focus on Our Customers

4.2. Goal 2: Continuous Modernization of Our Operations

4.3. Goal 3: Build and Enhance Our DoD Data Environment

4.4. Goal 4: Transform from a Records Center into a Knowledge Provider

4.5. Goal 5: Grow and Care for Our Diverse Workforce

5. Operationalizing the Strategy 

5.1. Implementation Roadmaps

5.2. Preview Release Product

5.3. Establish Metrics Dashboards

6. Conclusion 

TABLE OF CONTENTS
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DTIC FY 2023 to FY 2028 Strategic Plan
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DTIC FY 2023 to FY 2028 Strategic Plan

1. Introduction

Thirty years ago, DTIC helped transform DoD 

communications with the standup of DefenseLINK, the 

DoD homepage and first official DoD website. Soon after, 

DTIC utilized the web to rapidly provide S&T research 

information to customers around the world. DTIC has 

provided hundreds of thousands of researchers, scientists, 

and decision-makers across DoD, industry, and academia 

access to these records; this includes supporting more 

than a billion downloads. Today, technology places 

us at another inflection point allowing the DoD S&T 

community to again leap forward with DTIC as a critical 

resource. Our holdings of more than 4.7 million research 

artifacts over the past 75 years are the living record of 

S&T accomplishment and the base of next generation 

capability to our warfighters.

Building on technology advances, DTIC will continue 

its transformation from an information repository to a 

21st century knowledge providing organization that will 

capture, structure, enhance, analyze, and share the 

Department’s investment in science and technology. This 

is what pushes us to transform into a knowledge providing 

organization, delivering full situational awareness of 

science and technology (S&T) activity. DTIC must provide 

users with access to the computational power offered in 

the cloud and analytic solutions supported with AI/ML 

tools. DTIC makes S&T more efficient and increases our 

S&T Return on Investment (ROI). This ROI is measured 

in the speed of new capability delivered to our warfighters, 

the overmatch capability the U.S. brings to the fight, and 

the success and safety of our forces deployed. 

1.1 Problem Statement

Readiness and Availability: DTIC platform readiness 

is degraded by mission creep and resource short falls. 

System availability is negatively impacted by data 

center capacity limits activity as well as DoD network 

latency that hampers user login and corrupts downloads. 

Limited capacity and legacy data center architecture 

hinders our adoption of modern commercial solutions 

to meet core needs.

Response: Build on the Air Force Cloud One DevSecOps 

(DSOP) environment to speed development and 

deployment and reduce infrastructure operation demands. 

Leverage Cloud One ever-green Software and Platform 

as a Service (SaaS/PaaS) solutions to provide user 

access to the latest commercial applications. 

Content Submission: The current DTIC platform lacks 

modern e-commerce features. The submission processing 

is manually intensive, delays posting, and lacks bulk 

upload for technical reports. Submission is mandatory but 

lacks a compliance mechanism and is not part of Services 

authoritative document pipelines.

Response: Drive the multiple content submission 

solutions currently hosted on DLA and DTIC platforms to a 

single, intuitive interface to anticipate customer needs and 

transfer submission burden to the application interface. 

Search & Analysis: DTIC’s current search implementation 

has not keep pace with commercial competitors and the 

user interface is inconsistent as they navigate through 

multiple tools. Users must conduct multiple searches 
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to find a relevant document. The search engine lacks 

analysis features designed to anticipate customer needs, 

provide answers (not just documents) and visualizations.

Response: Leverage cutting edge SaaS solutions to 

simplify the user discovery experience and design a 

seamless transition between content discovery and S&T 

portfolio analytics. Utilize built-in and DTIC developed ML 

solutions to focus search returns for each customer and 

user profile.

Data Sets: Data set management is new to DoD, with 

complexities around discoverability, portability, quality, 

access rights, and classification through compilation and 

aggregation.

Response: Work directly with DoD CDAO to establish and 

maintain S&T data governance procedures in both Cloud 

One and Advana. Implement digital persistent identifiers 

to better connect data sets and utilize ML to derive S&T 

knowledge graphs that enhance data set quality and 

discoverability, while supporting early identification of data 

set classification risks.

1.2 Scope 

The DTIC Strategic Plan applies to both our DTIC 

workforce and our highly diverse customer base of DoD 

and Services leadership, S&T laboratories, Program 

Executive Office (PEO) and federally funded research 

and development centers (FFRDC) staff, academic and 

non-profit institutions, and industry partners. The plan is 

intended to shape and guide the internal culture change 

at DTIC and improve the way we build, operate, and 

maintain our customer facing systems. 

2. Mission, Vision and 

Guiding Principles

2.1 Mission Statement

Preserve, curate, and share knowledge from DoD’s annual 

multi-billion dollar investment in science and technology, 

multiplying the value and accelerating capability to the 

warfighter. 

2.2 Vision Statement

The Defense research and development (R&D) 

community recognizes DTIC as the provider of choice for 

defense research information, knowledge sharing, and 

advanced analysis.

2.3 Guiding Principles

DTIC is directed and committed to collect, preserve, and 

disseminate S&T knowledge and partner with others to 

bring this knowledge to bear on the DoD’s challenges.

• We put our Customers first and our Actions

focus on our Warfighters.

• We have Integrity and show Respect.

• We are Creative and Efficient.

• We Protect information while 

Effectively sharing.

• We are Accountable for delivering Capability.

• We Empower our community to Innovate.

3. Essential Capabilities

3.1 Talent and Culture 

People are the strength of our organization. Against the 

backdrop of technological change, DTIC is most defined 

by our people and our partnerships. We recognize that 

shifting to a customer first culture is only achievable 

by the collective talent, skills, and capabilities of our 

professionals. DTIC must enable a transformed workforce 

to achieve operational excellence through improved 

customer communication, collaboration, and S&T 

knowledge services. To empower our staff, we will invest 

in training to inspire them to actively learn, innovate with, 

and leverage new technologies. It is vitally important 

we provide our staff with the tools and resources that 

empower them to accomplish goals that directly contribute 

to our customers’ success.

3.2 Measured Process Improvement 

Business process improvement efforts are focused on 

improving DTIC product and service delivery by removing 

impediments preventing achievement of customer 

satisfaction criteria. We recognize that process measures 

provide value only when analyzed and incorporated into 

assessment and planning, and we will require metrics be 

included with activity reports and in decision activities. 

DTIC established a metrics team that tracks customer 

access and product usage. Operating in a new cloud 

environment, we will revitalize our change management 

process to speed adoption of change by fully documenting 

our new baseline, identifying roles and responsibilities 
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DTIC FY 2023 to FY 2028 Strategic Plan

within DTIC and our contracted partners, and improving 

configuration controls and identifying dependencies. We 

will refocus our resources that work with the community to 

replace resource intensive hardcopy media submissions 

and simplify electronic submission for remote customers. 

DTIC will refine our products and services and seek 

opportunities to transfer work that is not in our core mission.

3.3 Cyber Operations 

To deliver the capabilities our customers require to analyze 

the state of a technology, identify mission capability gaps, 

and identify the next innovative solution, DTIC must utilize 

cutting-edge commercial capabilities and technologies. 

DTIC will work with the DoD Chief Information Officer (CIO), 

Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), Joint Forces 

Headquarters DoD Information Networks (JFHQ-DoDIN), 

and US Cyber Command (CYBERCOM) to advocate for 

initiatives that support adoption of innovative capabilities 

and technologies that support scientific and technical 

information discovery and analysis. DTIC will enhance the 

delivery and management of IT capabilities and services 

by leveraging commercial best practices, processes within 

proven government cloud solution providers. We must 

balance our need to share the Department’s research 

activities with the unintended disclosure of sensitive 

information through the aggregation and compilation of 

data sets through new policy and technology solutions. 

DTIC’s access and identity management modernization 

solutions will focus on a risk-based approach. We will 

increase traceability to DTIC distributed material by 

adding digital rights management to limit secondary 

release and to offer authenticated customers access to 

related material.

3.4 Advanced Analytics

DTIC customers have a tangible need to harness complex 

volumes of data and convert it into actionable insights to 

help drive faster and better decision-making, expedient 

analyses, predictable outcomes, and optimal operational 

efficiency. DTIC is implementing and evolving an advanced 

analytics capability to provide timely, relevant, and 

accurate knowledge to support real-time decision making 

for Principals, specialized customers, S&T analysts, and 

all DTIC customer levels. DTIC customers need access to 

analytic tools to manage, collect, and leverage large data 

sets of both structured and unstructured data for various 

mission-critical analyses. We will work with our customers 

to refine data standards, data profiling, and stewardship 

principles and increase standards and processes for 

enhanced AI-enabled data sets and ML operations. DTIC 

will leverage impactful business processes linked with 

new cyber operations that integrate advanced analytics 

of complex data and provide the deeper, exploratory 

perspective on the data, while having standard business 

intelligence systems that provide a more structured 

customer experience.

4. Goals and 

Enabling Objectives

DTIC exists to protect and extend the value of DoD’s 

$16B annual investment in S&T. This gets to the central 

purpose of DTIC. To preserve discovery and share the 

knowledge via secure, state of the art technology solutions, 

so that future S&T projects are better positioned to extend 

beyond research rather than repeat it not knowing what 

had come before.

Core DTIC Goals:

• Focus on our Customers

• Modernize Our Operations

• Build and Enhance Our/DoD Data Environment

• Transform from a Record Repository into a 

Knowledge Provider

• Grow and Care for Our Diverse Workforce

4.1 Goal 1: Focus on Our Customers 

Our view of the entire DoD S&T enterprise allows us 

to serve all customers. We will model new behaviors, 

investigate leading technologies, and instill new ways 

of thinking with an undivided focus on enabling our 

customers to achieve their mission. Implementation 

of new capabilities and solutions to our day-to-day 

challenges must always incorporate a clear understanding 

of our customers’ perspective and experience. Wherever 

possible, we will seek to identify and eliminate barriers 

between our customers and our products and services. 

We will continue to leverage the 

power of the cloud to enhance 

capabilities for our customer, 

maximize availability of DTIC 

tools and, when issues arise, 

we must use automation to 

course correct to ensure we are 

supporting the 24/7 activities of 

the DoD. As new priorities are 

announced by the Office of the 

Under Secretary of Defense 

for Research and Engineering 

OUSD(R&E), DTIC will update 

our document curation and 
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processing to identify relevant materials, perform analysis, 

develop implementing policy, and ensure our Information 

Analysis Center (IAC) program vendors can give top tier 

support. The complexity, time, and costs to develop and 

employ ML algorithms, and the need to better understand 

our customers’ requirements and expectations will 

inspire us to expand and solidify our partnerships across 

Services, agencies, and industries.

• Objective 1: Transfer burden of submissions 

from customers to systems. 

• Objective 2: Anticipate customer needs to 

make submission and discovery intuitive. 

• Objective 3: Accelerate delivery of 

IAC capabilities.

4.2 Goal 2: Modernize Our Operations

As we continually modernize our customer facing tools, 

we engage with subject matter experts in OUSD(R&E), 

Office of the DoD Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence 

Officer (CDAO), the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), the 

Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC), and private 

industry. DTIC plans to lease software in the government 

cloud through software as a service (SaaS) or platform 

as a service (PaaS) to accelerate our fielding of the most 

current commercial technology. We will also simplify 

and consolidate our customer facing interfaces to 

enable an all-digital ingest pipeline and reduce the 

S&T product gap we experience today. DTIC must 

leverage approved open source and commercial 

products that further our mission and greatly reduce the 

development, customization, and maintenance schedules 

we have today. This will remove as much as two years 

in market survey, procurement, and fielding, and simplify 

our ability to deliver the most current commercial release 

to customers. We will consolidate and modernize most of 

our application portfolio and deliver an integrated search, 

discovery, and advanced analytics friendly platform. In 

addition to our technology stack, we must also conserve 

resources and streamline our operations by sunsetting or 

transferring those activities that are no longer value-added 

to our mission.

• Objective 1: Implement pipeline automation 

(including services). 

• Objective 2: Leverage technology application 

to intelligent solutions. 

• Objective 3: Reduce cost and complexity 

by streamlining our portfolio of activities 

and applications. 

4.3 Goal 3: Build and Enhance Our/

DoD Data Environment 

The Department of Defense (DoD) must realize the full 

potential of research and the key data produced in our 

labs, agencies, contracts, and grants, to protect and 

defend the United States and increase military lethality, 

support reform, and support partnership opportunities. 

Improved data management impact each of these areas 

and will enhance the Department’s ability to fight and win 

wars in an era of great power competition. To this end, the 

DTIC must shed outdated data practices, and recognize 

our investment in and the value of research, engineering, 

and technical data, embrace data-driven concepts of 

operation, and leverage commercial-sector innovations. 

In conjunction with DoD Data Strategy, DTIC will leverage 

our extensive experience managing S&T content to 

assess enterprise S&T data management requirements 

and ensure OUSD(R&E)’s data set interests and equities 

are protected. The need to balance release of DoD’s 

research activity with unintended disclosure of sensitive 

information through the aggregation and compilation of 

data sets has slowed our release to the public in support 

of open science. DTIC will bring our proven track record 

to guide advancement of development, governance, 

curation, logistics, and user management (access controls 

and authentication) capabilities. DTIC will seek to federate 

to DoD and federal government data sources. 

• Objective 1: Simplify and migrate the DTIC 

collections to the Cloud One environment. 

• Objective 2: Establish and maintain data 

governance procedures via Cloud One 

and Advana. 

• Objective 3: Advance the research data sets by 

working with DoD CDAO.

4.4 Goal 4: Transform from a Records 

Center into a Knowledge Provider

The complexity and scale of our information environment 

is continuously and rapidly expanding. We have a unique 

opportunity to better serve our customers and support 

the S&T community by reducing this complexity across 

our collections. We will do this by transforming how 

we organize, retrieve, and share information to deliver 

enhanced search results, real-time insights, relevant 

links to additional content and broader context around the 

records in our collections. Building and developing our 

internal knowledge management capabilities will enable 

us to expand our collections through knowledge mapping 

and gap analysis. As this capability matures, we will not 
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wait for customers to come to us but will seek out ways 

to identify and proactively engage them with the right 

information at the right time. In addition to connecting 

people to content, we will foster greater collaboration 

by connecting experts across the S&T community and 

providing them the secure space and tools to exchange 

information and ideas that rapidly advance their critical 

work. Sharing information and connecting users to 

content is key. We need to balance sharing and protecting 

information and ensuring we are protecting the information 

that is entrusted to DTIC.

• Objective 1: Establish a formal knowledge 

management (KM) capability. 

• Objective 2: Identify and resolve knowledge 

gaps across our collections. 

• Objective 3: Leverage advanced analytics to 

deliver enhanced and relevant search results 

in context.

• Objective 4: Balance information sharing 

with information protection.

4.5 Goal 5: Grow and Care for Our 

Diverse Workforce

DTIC is firmly committed to the Equal Employment 

Opportunity (EEO) principles that all people should have 

the right to work and advance based on merit and ability, 

regardless of their race, sex, color, religion, disability, 

national origin, or age. Our diversity provides us with 

the ability to better understand and support our user 

community. We will identify and recruit top talent to close 

skill gaps to become a center of excellence and employer 

of choice. DTIC will transform our workforce to achieve 

operational excellence for improved customer service, 

communication, and coordination. We will continue to 

emphasize Schedule A hiring authorities, and when 

available resume our partnership with the US Army Warrior 

Transition Battalion. We will continue to look to programs 

hosted by the General Services Administration (GSA) and 

DIU to attract and interact with college fellows to identify 

new approaches to solve challenges. Beyond our current 

efforts, we must renew visits (in person and virtual) to 

minority colleges and universities and seek out ways to 

reach out to attract applicants from underrepresented 

communities. In all cases we must attract and retain 

the best most capable workforce reaching out to all 

backgrounds and experiences.

• Objective 1: Recruit diverse talent and 

become an employer of choice. 

• Objective 2: Train to inspire innovation 

using new technologies. 

• Objective 3: Promote and sustain a culture 

of employee career development.

5. Operationalizing 

the Strategy

Central to operationalizing the DTIC strategy is keeping 

pace with technological advancement, refining, and 

maturing our underlying processes, assessing how 

innovations meet our business needs, and prioritizing 

investments by cost and benefit. We leverage our guiding 

principles to decide where and how resources should 

be dedicated for rapid and responsible deployment of 

the best solutions for our customers. This will help us 

provide a standardized foundation of efficient, secure, 

and sustainable technology solutions to all customers and 

identify areas where S&T innovations integrates with the 

RDT&E lifecycle to achieve the DTIC mission.
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5.1 Implementation Roadmaps

Accountability is a core leadership responsibility, and 

we must be accountable to each other, our leadership, 

customer base and the public. DTIC responds to direction 

from OUSD(R&E), DoD CIO & CDAO, JFHQ-DoDIN, 

CYBERCOM, and Congress. We must account for and 

recognize utilization of resources as essential, enumerate 

impacts to existing workload, memorialize the priority 

and resourcing decision, and clarify OUSD(R&E)’s 

direction for DTIC. To reinforce accountability and mission 

priorities, DTIC Directors, Deputy Directors and Division 

Chiefs will participate in the development of the Strategic 

Plan Implementation Roadmaps. The DTIC Administrator 

will designate a lead for each of the five goals in the 

5-year Strategic Plan. The goal leads will coordinate 

development and maintenance of the implementation 

roadmaps. Each implementation roadmap will be 24 

months long and refreshed on six-month cycles. The 

implementation roadmaps should sufficiently detail the 

key product deliverables and project milestones to support 

achievement of DTIC’s strategic objectives. The internal 

24-month implementation roadmaps will be available to 

all DTIC staff and drive higher level 12-month product 

roadmaps designed for customer facing communication. 

5.2 Preview Release Product

As part of “Goal 2: Modernize Our Operations”, DTIC 

will redesign and enhance Search leveraging the latest 

commercial cloud capabilities. To ensure the new 

DTIC Search is aligned to the needs of the DoD S&T 

community, DTIC will offer a preview release to DoD 

military and civilian customers. The new DTIC Search 

implementation will follow an Agile methodology to deploy 

enhanced analytic features, visualizations, and machine 

learning tools to enable S&T discovery against DTIC’s full 

collection. 

5.3 Establish Metrics Dashboard

To validate measured process improvement, DTIC 

is currently implementing dashboards for each DoD 

laboratory with information on their submissions, usage, 

and other activity. We are adding gap analysis to show 

where we think we are missing information, and we will 

break out additional demographics on information usage 

and customers. DTIC will automate the dashboards 

to present the most up-to-date information. Baselining 

and measuring are critical to understanding progress 

and accomplishment. The improvement efforts result in 

reduced cycle time or latency, elimination of non-valueadded steps, elimination of rework, and/or improved 

quality. We recognize that measures provide value only 

when analyzed and incorporated into assessment and 

planning, and we will require metrics be included with 

activity reports and in decision activities. We will provide 

submission tracking information and notify submitters 

when their documents are available to the community as 

well as metrics on document access.

6. Conclusion 

DTIC is at a pivotal point in our history, and we must 

respond aggressively. We have a vision to apply stateof-the-art technology with the support of our exceptional 

people. We will aggressively challenge the “way we 

have always worked,” and adopt new processes and 

technologies that meet the needs and expectations of our 

customers and mission partners. As we move to the U.S. 

Air Force Cloud One/Platform One, we will consolidate 

and simplify our offerings and operational position. We 

will improve the completeness and quality of our DoD 

collections and extend access to new sources. As we 

embrace and implement AI-ready data sets driving MLops solutions, DTIC will deliver a more complete picture 

of the worldwide S&T frontier and unleash the power of 

the Department’s research activities to inform and inspire 

future innovations. We will work with the S&T community 

and continue to reach out to innovators and key providers 

to insure we are supporting our users with continuous 

modernization. Measuring performance at various levels 

and through different lenses will allow us to monitor 

incremental progress toward achieving our goals and can 

help us identify where changes must happen. It only takes 

imagination, compute power, and storage. Now it is up to 

us. Each of us has a role. 

“We will aggressively CHALLENGE the 

‘way we have always worked,’ and adopt 

NEW PROCESSES and technologies”
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