UNCLASSIFIED software on DoD. The Department has historically been challenged to keep up with cyber threats to its IT infrastructure. 1.2 Disparate Cloud Efforts and Disjointed Implementation DoD has not had clear guidance on cloud computing, adoption, and migration to provide unifying guidance or a coherent plan. This has made it difficult for the Department to embrace modem IT capabilities, to benefit from the efficiency and capacity offered by commercial cloud services, and to continue to evolve with technology at the speed of relevance. The lack of guidance has led to Departmental inefficiencies and has hindered the Department in IT modernization efforts. It has led to disparate efforts with siloed teams, disjointed implementations with limited capability, siloed data, and inefficient acquisitions that cannot take advantage of economies of scale. 1.3 Lack of Cloud Fitness DoD has stood up a number of clouds that have not been architected or designed for enterprise use. It is imperative that DoD has a cloud strategy to ensure that legacy applications are not moved to cloud without properly rearchitecting them to make use of the data, security, resiliency, and application advantages that cloud provides. Additionally, DoD should independently test and assess cloud network security to verify security compliance and incident response, and review all contractor and third-party testing results to ensure that performance and security monitoring are sufficient. Systems that are not "cloud ready" will most likely use excessive amounts of cloud infrastructure resources, meaning they will not be any more efficient and will almost certainly cost more to operate. This is why system rationalization is critical, but, without proper guidance, many program offices may not do this properly or skip it entirely. There is currently no enterprise-wide guidance on how to rationalize a system nor for assessing a system's cloud readiness. This gap has further led to the siloed data behavior mentioned earlier and restricted the ability of the Department to share information. This enterprise-wide guidance is imperative to the success of any cloud strategy - enterprise or otherwise. As DoD has continued to stand up independent clouds, we continue to dilute our already constrained cloud expertise. This enterprise cloud strategy provides the constructs for optimizing our use of cloud talent. To date, the DoD oftentimes relies on outside contracting firms to perform these assessments, never building the organic corporate knowledge to carry us into the future. Decisions are being made at high levels without in-house technical expertise as advisors. The Department must invest in its own future by building technical knowledge within. 1.4 Readiness for Artificial Intelligence (Al) As DoD embarks to stand up a Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC), it will require an enterprise cloud infrastructure capability. An enterprise cloud will provide the common data and infrastructure platforms that will enable Al to meet the full promise of warfighter advantage. DoD has created this DoD Cloud Strategy to align with the larger DoD cyber strategy, strengthening the security and resilience of the networks and systems that contribute to the Department's military advantage. 2