With new 'VIA' strategy, General Dynamics IT evolves how it will pursue growth
"This is not a reaction. This is an evolution,” says Amy Gilliland, president of GDIT. General Dynamics
By
Nick Wakeman
The company is deepening its technology investments and increasing its focus on partnerships and delivery. As GDIT's president tells us, this is more of an evolutionary than a reactionary move.
General Dynamics IT has booked $18.3 billion in new business and recompete awards since launching its technology investment strategy in 2023, which included creating several digital accelerators.
Following that string of wins, GDIT announced Tuesday morning that has launched a new tech strategy under the acronym of VIA – Vision, Innovation and Acceleration.
As GDIT President Amy Gilliland rolls out VIA to employees this week, she told Washington Technology that the changes are not fixes to the 2023 strategy.
“There isn’t one impetus that said, 'We need to do this,'” she said. “This is not a reaction, this is an evolution.”
VIA also builds on $1.2 billion in capital investments in 2025 by corporate General Dynamics to expand facilities and build more advanced manufacturing capabilities. GDIT itself is investing in new technology offerings and particularly around the battlespace of the future, border security, and smart government modernization.
Gilliland said GDIT's strategy needed to change because the pace of technological change is increasing.
“Technology is evolving so quickly. The pace of the technology evolution means we have to be quicker to bring the best technology to the mission,” Gilliland said. “That’s really our job.”
As a systems integrator, GDIT looks at the requirements first and then matches the technology to them.
“At the end of the day, mission success is bringing the best technologies to the customer,” she said.
Meanwhile, customers are changing their approach to technology by embracing more commercial technologies and different ways of acquiring the tech faster.
“They need the very best and they understand that they don’t have the time for procurement cycles that they used to have,” she said. “That’s why you see all the OTAs.”
VIA strategy also reshapes GDIT’s way of doing business by creating an enterprise business execution office to oversee corporate development strategies and operations. Paul Nedzbala, former leader of GDIT's civilian division, moved up to the chief business officer position in January.
This execution office and GDIT’s centers of excellence get at what Gilliland calls the “final mile” challenge.
“When you build a house, the last pieces can be the hardest to get done,” she said.
GDIT has the technologies, solutions and partnerships that are responsive to the mission.
“But how can we bring all of these together? That’s the final mile, and I’ll tell you that’s a beast,” Gilliland said.
The business execution office and the centers of excellence in areas such as cyber, AI, and mission software are designed to connect the company’s capabilities and its areas of investment with GDIT’s growth structure.
“When you are bidding on a complex enterprise IT project you need to reach in to cyber, you need to reach into software development, you need to reach into AI,” she said.
One example of how this will look is illustrated by GDIT’s Defense Operations Grid-Mesh Accelerator or DOGMA solution. DOGMA is a counter-unmanned aerial systems solution that draws on AI, cloud and satellite connectivity.
GDIT has demonstrated DOGMA at several military exercises and launched it as a solution for intelligence and civilian agencies to use in aerial threat detection, critical infrastructure protection, intelligence analysis, border security, transportation optimization and smart city traffic monitoring.
“When we first envisioned this, we were really thinking about defense and drones,” Gilliland said. “But when we think about it more broadly, DOGMA has applications for other priorities. The border, for instance.”
For this to happen, she said GDIT’s defense people have to talk to the homeland security business.
DOGMA is also an example of how GDIT is working more closely with commercial partners. In this case, the partner was Amazon Web Services.
“We have both co-invested and co-developed this solution,” Gilliland said. “When you bring our capabilities together, it streamlines data processing, analysis, and decision-making.”
The time it takes to determine friends and foes can be reduced from 30 minutes to 30 seconds and perhaps to three seconds as the algorithms get trained, she said.
GDIT's business execution office primarily focuses on programs and corporate development, with the idea of bringing together capabilities the company needs to deliver on its contracts.
“It gives me oversight on large, new and troubled programs,” Gilliland said.
Gilliland sees the office as helping senior leaders organize their thinking about how GDIT grows its capabilities and how to answer the build, buy or partner equation.
“We want to make sure that we as a business are thoughtful about where we need to expand our capabilities,” she said.
Both VIA and the earlier 2023 strategy focused on building GDIT’s capabilities and winning new business, but they also focus on culture and the workforce.
Culture is one of the factors Gilliland said she uses to measure GDIT’s success. The run of wins over the last three years did not surprise her.
“But I’ll tell you where I was surprised,” she said. “The quality of talent that we were able to retain and attract was just phenomenal. People want to work on really cool things.”
Gilliland referred back to earlier Washington Technology interviews where she talked about building a company with a soul.
“It matters where you work, but it also matters what you do, and these technologists have lots of options,” she said. “I will measure us also on the culture that we’re building here because a collaborative culture that really focuses on people helps us to be more thoughtful and to bring the best minds to the table.”