The Defense Information Systems Agency, the Pentagon’s IT arm, is facing a 10% cut to its workforce, its director told lawmakers this week.
Speaking to senators in Washington on Wednesday, Lt. Gen. Paul Stanton said DISA was set to lose around one tenth of its staff but that that could be a good thing for the agency.
“It’s giving us an opportunity to ruthlessly realign and optimize how we are addressing what is an evolving mission,” he said. “We are doing a realignment and we’re going back to the department to ask for what we refer to as a surgical rehiring. We need to hire the right people back into the right positions to then lead us forward.”
DISA currently has around 20,000 employees — including about 6,800 civilians and more than 10,000 contractors, Stanton said.
The cuts come as part of a wider realignment in the Department of Defense.
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced in April that the DoD would be doing away with billions of dollars worth of IT and consulting contracts, including some with companies such as Accenture and Deloitte.
“These terminations represent $5.1 billion in wasteful spending at the Department, and nearly $4 billion in estimated savings,” Hegseth said in a memo.
But Stanton assured that the cuts at DISA were being conducted in a strategic manner.
“Our contracts are aligned to the highly technical IT and cybersecurity workforce. They’re not consulting contracts. These are individuals that are putting hands on keyboard, that are running fibreoptic cables, that are performing server maintenance in a global footprint,” he said, adding that DISA’s contracts were “healthy” and “in a good spot.”
It comes after the Defense Department announced plans in February to reduce its civilian workforce by 5 to 8% in an effort to “to produce efficiencies and refocus the Department on the President’s priorities and restoring readiness in the force.”
The DOD employs more than 900,000 civilians around the world, in jobs ranging from engineering and tech to finance and legal.
Efforts to reduce its workforce come as part of the wider government cuts pushed by President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency.
The Elon Musk-linked agency has been tasked with maximising efficiency and productivity across the government under Trump’s new administration, and it has carried out waves of controversial layoffs in pursuit of its goal.
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