Air Force CIO Venice Goodwine Wins 2nd Wash100 Award for AI, IT Vision
Executive Mosaic is pleased to announce that Venice Goodwine, who serves as the chief information officer of the Department of the Air Force, has been named to the Wash100 Award class of 2025. The Wash100 awards are given out annually in recognition of the most influential and impactful members of the government and government contracting industry. Goodwine’s win this year is her second straight.
Commenting on the award, Executive Mosaic CEO Jim Garrettson said, “Venice’s second Wash100 win reflects the major technological impact she’s making on Air Force IT’s expanding complexity of superiority. Managing a $17 billion portfolio, she’s leading advancements in AI, cybersecurity and enterprise IT while supporting 20,000 cyber personnel worldwide. Her keynote at the Potomac Officers Club’s 2024 Air Force Summit highlighted her strategic approach to AI and the Air Force’s push to stay ahead in the digital era.”
Select Venice Goodwine as your favorite 2025 Wash100 Award winner at Wash100.com! Voting closes on April 30, with the winner of the popular vote competition to be announced soon thereafter.
Delivering IT Capabilities
Concerning her duties, Goodwine said late last year, “I have a responsibility to the secretary, but also his staff and both services [the Air Force and the Space Force], to ensure their IT requirements are captured and developed in a way that is not only responsive but cost effective and interoperable with one another.”
In support of this responsibility, the Headquarters Cyberspace Capabilities Center at Scott Air Force Base in Illinois was aligned in December to the Office of the DAF Chief Information Officer as a field operating agency. According to then Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall, who himself is a past Wash100 awardee, the move is meant to streamline and consolidate IT functions and ensure IT service delivery.
For her part, Goodwine said the alignment “will help reinforce adherence to the capability delivery process.”
Expanding Cloud Services
Among the capabilities the DAF CIO seeks to deliver are cloud services, whose use in the Air Force she has sought to expand, covering applications in classified networks as well as in the tactical edge.
Regarding the cloud, Goodwine said at a conference back in May 2024, “[If] I’m going to have decision advantage, I have to make sure that the data is available. The data needs to be where the warfighter is and the data needs to be in the cloud.”
At the time, three solicitations were expected to be released in support of the requirement, called CloudOne Next, by the third quarter of 2024, with awards to be issued by the fourth quarter. As of October, Accenture Federal Services was named the winner on the contract, which has a maximum value of $1.6 billion.
Adopting AI
Another important capability Goodwine and her office are working to deliver is artificial intelligence. Goodwine discussed this topic at the Potomac Officers Club’s 2024 Air Defense Summit in July, where she said she is looking to AI to improve productivity and “give time back to airmen and guardians so they can do other things.”
The DAF CIO said one of the multiple AI-related efforts underway is the development of a chatbot called NIPRGPT, which is expected to provide Air Force personnel with assistance in certain tasks. The tool was launched in June and, as of November, was found to have been employed by service members mainly for document summarization and drafting and coding assistance.
Back at the POC event, Goodwine also held roundtable AI discussions so that she and her team could identify the various ways different organizations used large language models so as to determine which use cases are applicable for the Air Force and how these use cases might be governed, funded and scaled; and how personnel might be upskilled to best take advantage of the technology. The possible ways forward will ultimately inform a request for proposals on the application of AI in the Air Force.
“I’ve asked the team to think big picture, wide scale. If I just go straight to public, get a contract and say every airman and guardian can now just have a license to use LLMs and put the governance around it. Or if I go to the other scale, which now at AFRL I have my own GPUs, if I go that route, how do I create that model? So we are in the midst of doing all of that,” Goodwine said.
Having a Clear Vision
For Jim Garrettson, Goodwine’s having a clear vision and being results oriented are the kinds of qualities that the Wash100 celebrates.
“Venice is strengthening the Air Force’s technological foundation and ensuring it remains at the forefront of innovation,” Garrettson, the founder of the Wash100 Award, said.
For her part, Goodwine said about her 2025 win, “I am deeply honored to receive the Wash100 Award from Executive Mosaic. Being recognized alongside such distinguished leaders is truly humbling and I am proud to be part of such an outstanding group. This award is a testament not only to my efforts but, more importantly, to the exceptional dedication and hard work of my entire team. It is their unwavering commitment that has made this achievement possible, and together, we are steadfast in our commitment to delivering the IT capabilities our Airmen and Guardians need to deter our adversaries and win. By driving value in our IT spend, building a data-readiness across the Department, and expanding our Zero Trust security environment, we ensure our readiness and resilience in an ever-evolving landscape.”
Executive Mosaic congratulates Venice Goodwine and her team for this remarkable achievement.
Don’t forget to vote for Venice Goodwine as your esteemed 2025 Wash100 awardee at Wash100.com!