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Leidos’ Steve Hull Takes Us Inside Company’s DigMod Sector

Digital modernization is a necessity for government agencies and commercial companies alike as technology continues to evolve. Leidos picked up on this cue and created the Digital Modernization Sector that looks across the entire organization and brings emerging tech to “orchestrate innovation” for its customers.

GovCon Wire had the pleasure of sitting down with Leidos’ DigMod Sector President Steve Hull to get a closer look at the sector’s recent wins and learn more about what lies ahead in 2025. Read below for the full conversation with Steve Hull of Leidos.

GovCon Wire: Steve, as the leader of the Digital Modernization Sector, can you highlight some of your most notable accomplishments thus far?

Steve Hull: The 11,000-plus Leidos Digital Modernization employees have been very busy over the past year. Most recently, we were awarded a $331 million contract to modernize the Army’s Global Unified Network. This aligns with the Army’s network modernization strategy and unified network plan.

We also won the recompete of the $738 million Air Force Cybersecurity and IT Support contract to continue delivering secure, resilient technology essential to advancing the Air Force’s mission security in the national capital region. Additionally, we secured an $823 million task order by DISA through our Defense Enclave Services, or DES, contract to operate and sustain the modernized DODNet, which will consolidate the legacy DOD Fourth Estate systems aiming to create a more efficient, modern, secure and scalable common IT computing environment for end users. 

Through these programs, we are focused on driving effective and efficient contract execution by leveraging repeatable and resilient solutions, best practices and strategic partnerships. These collaborations support resilient, adaptable and cost-effective outcomes that reduce risk and are designed to provide a seamless end-user experience, even as needs evolve.

DigMod serves as a company-wide enabler of integrated digital systems, bringing together mission and enterprise IT across Leidos. Lastly, by leveraging our best-in-class capabilities, deep mission understanding, amazing talent and unrivaled scale, we’re not just solving problems — we’re driving transformation for our customers.

GCW: What are some of the main challenges you see as organizations pursue digital modernization? How are you leveraging tools and capabilities to help your customers solve those challenges?

Hull: First on that list is always talent. Our customers struggle to get the talent they need to execute complex, transformational work. We’re investing in our staff and upskilling our technical talent in areas like AI, quantum computing, cybersecurity and cryptography, just to name a few. This ensures we stay ahead in a competitive market.

A critical element of our success internally is our communities of practice. These are spaces where our best ideas take shape and where we share knowledge that drives repeatable offerings. It’s about harnessing the collective power of Leidos every day to solve our customers’ most vexing challenges quickly and efficiently.

Another universal challenge for digital modernization is the unprecedented speed of change. Moore’s Law has not gone away. It requires deep expertise in ever-changing technology areas like generative AI, cybersecurity and cloud computing. To address this, we’ve focused on solving the most challenging technical and mission issues for our customers.

Lastly, I’d say aligning R&D efforts to accelerate the use of commercial technology and capabilities to address our customer mission challenges more quickly is critical. Our customers face significant amounts of technical debt while trying to integrate new technologies. They are also facing emerging threats and executive orders to keep pace with an ever evolving threat landscape. That’s where we come in. We’re working to help them navigate that process by offering proven technology that enables us to think big and move fast to deliver resilient and secure capabilities to unburden otherwise slow-moving legacy systems.

GCW: How is Leidos leveraging partnerships with other organizations to differentiate itself from competitors in the digital modernization space?

Hull: Strategic partnerships are a key part of our strategy. We believe our role is to be the orchestrator of innovation for our customers, serving as the bridge between commercial technology providers and our customers’ regulated environments. We bring together diverse skills, available technologies and innovative approaches while fostering collaboration to create a win-win for our customers, shareholders and partners.

With that in mind, we’ve focused on creating scalable, repeatable offerings that can be applied across different customers. These offerings combine our mission knowledge with commercial technology from our strategic partners, enabling us to deliver cutting-edge solutions in cloud, cyber, AI, application modernization and customer experience more quickly and efficiently.

For example, we entered into a multi-year strategic collaboration agreement with Amazon Web Services to advance capabilities within multi-domain operations, with an emphasis on hybrid architectures and managed services consumption models. Additionally, Leidos has teamed with Sourcegraph to bring secure, generative AI-enabled software development to government customers.

Another partnership we’re excited about is our exclusive agreement with Moveworks.This collaboration differentiates us in delivering generative AI-based IT service desk technology by providing an agentic AI copilot to help users efficiently access information within the enterprise.  By deploying their technology within the Leidos IT environment, we’ve automated the processing of thousands of service requests, showcasing our ability to drive efficiency and enhance service delivery for our internal customers.  

GCW: What’s next for digital modernization at Leidos? Tell me about the headwinds you face going into 2025 and the opportunities you’re pursuing.

Hull: We will continue to deliver differentiated capabilities that solve difficult customer missions through repeatable offerings and by accelerating our customers’ digital modernization journeys. We see increased use of Trusted Mission AI as an integral component of our architecture, serving as the orchestrator across cloud, cyber, customer experience and application modernization.

We believe customers will continue to leverage the cloud as a destination for legacy systems and for modernizing those systems, but also for adopting more software-as-a-service, or SaaS, and platform-as-a-service, or PaaS, solutions. Underpinning all of this is a growing need for full-spectrum cybersecurity solutions to address advanced threats from nation-state actors and the unethical use of AI by bad actors.

Automation remains a key trend in digital modernization, with growing adoption of robotic process automation, AI-driven decision-making tools and machine learning to enhance operations. These tools streamline repetitive tasks, increase efficiency and reduce human error.

Leidos has long been an industry leader in cyber capabilities. By using automation for threat detection, response and data processing, we greatly enhance our analytical capabilities. Public-facing trends also emphasize the increasing role of AI and machine learning in driving process automation and innovation across industries. This is particularly valuable in areas where decision-making can be improved through real-time data insights. It’s one of many trends we are excited to implement and expand for our customers next year.

GCW: Any final thoughts you’d like to share with us?

Hull: As technology evolves, so do the threats we face. We’re seeing an increased need for interoperability, speed and agility across defense, national security, health and civil sectors. This has driven a surge in cloud adoption and AI and machine learning integrations, particularly to improve decision-making at all levels of command.

To keep pace, we must be more collaborative across government agencies and commercial partners. Whether it’s developing new technologies or integrating solutions, we’re leveraging our practices, repeatable offerings and strategic partnerships to make a real impact across critical sectors.

We’ll continue to push the boundaries in digital modernization. We’re not just meeting the needs of today; we’re laying the foundation for sustained growth and innovation well into the future.

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