Original Broadcast Date: 8/9/2026
The Defense Finance and Accounting Service (DFAS) is reshaping how it delivers financial services by reorganizing around the needs of its customers while modernizing the technology that supports its mission. According to Director Jonathan Witter, the agency's transformation is focused on creating a more unified organization that improves customer experience, strengthens operational efficiency, and applies artificial intelligence where it delivers measurable value.
Witter says DFAS began its modernization effort by examining how it serves its customers across the military, civilian workforce, retirees, and the defense industrial base.
Historically, many of those services operated independently with separate organizations, technology environments, and business processes. Rather than continuing to support those stovepipes, DFAS reorganized its operations into business lines designed around customer needs.
The agency established its Total Force Pay Business Line to unify services supporting military personnel, retirees, and civilian employees. Witter explains that bringing these functions together allows DFAS to deliver a more consistent experience throughout an individual's relationship with the federal government while simplifying internal operations.
DFAS also created a Defense Industrial Base Business Line focused on supporting acquisition organizations and the broader defense supply chain. Consolidating multiple organizations into a single business line allows workloads to be balanced more effectively while giving customers a single, coordinated support structure.
The results appeared quickly. Within a month of standing up the new organization, Witter says customer service tickets declined by 25 percent after teams were aligned around common performance targets and workloads could be shifted where capacity existed.
While the organizational changes provide a foundation, Witter describes modernization as a multi-year effort that extends well beyond restructuring.
The next phase focuses on identifying differences in business processes across formerly separate organizations and determining where common workflows can replace redundant practices.
Rather than maintaining multiple approaches to accomplishing similar work, DFAS is evaluating opportunities to standardize operations across business lines. Witter says the agency is also reviewing technologies that perform similar functions in different parts of the organization so successful capabilities can be expanded instead of recreated.
He notes that DFAS has a long history of innovation, but that innovation sometimes occurred independently across different organizations. By bringing teams together under shared business lines, the agency can solve problems once and apply successful solutions more broadly throughout the organization.
Improving customer experience also means changing how customers interact with DFAS services. One example is MyPay, the agency's online payroll system used by military members, retirees, and civilian employees. Witter explains that while customers have traditionally accessed MyPay through a web browser, DFAS is now working to make those services available through a mobile application.
The goal is to give military personnel easier access to pay information regardless of where they are stationed while creating additional ways for customers to communicate directly with the agency.
Alongside customer-facing improvements, DFAS continues evaluating where redundant systems and technologies can be consolidated to simplify operations and improve service delivery.
Artificial intelligence is another major component of DFAS' modernization strategy, but Witter says the agency approaches AI through clearly defined use cases rather than adopting technology for its own sake.
The guiding principle is building customer trust. "We want to build customers' trust in our products and services," Witter says. Within that framework, DFAS focuses AI efforts in two primary areas: personal productivity and mission productivity.
For employees, AI helps improve everyday work. Witter shares an example from the agency's IT organization where an employee used AI-assisted coding tools to reduce a software development task from approximately three months to about 30 minutes. Supervisors also found the resulting code to be higher quality, while AI tools help identify coding defects before deployment.
Beyond software development, AI supports financial reporting, audit activities, and data analysis by helping employees identify anomalies within large datasets so they can focus attention on the information requiring review instead of manually processing every record.
DFAS is also using AI to improve mission operations that directly affect customers.
Within customer service centers, AI helps accelerate caller identification by reviewing millions of records more efficiently than previous processes. Witter says the agency reduced the time required to identify callers by approximately 80 percent, allowing representatives to begin resolving issues more quickly.
Artificial intelligence also supports cybersecurity. Because MyPay contains sensitive financial information, protecting user accounts remains a critical priority. Witter explains that AI is helping strengthen defensive capabilities and has prevented thousands of attempts to divert customer pay.
These examples demonstrate how DFAS views AI as both an operational tool for employees and a mission capability that improves customer service while protecting critical systems.
Although DFAS has already implemented significant organizational changes, Witter says additional work remains.
The agency continues modernizing legacy technology, including updating long-standing retirement systems by converting older applications into cloud-ready environments. At the same time, DFAS is reviewing business processes across the enterprise to identify additional opportunities for standardization and efficiency.
Workforce development is another priority. Witter says employees at every level are receiving training to ensure they have the skills needed to support the agency's evolving mission and deliver high-quality customer service.
For DFAS, modernization extends beyond replacing technology. By reorganizing around customers, standardizing operations, applying AI to practical mission challenges, and investing in its workforce, the agency is building a foundation intended to improve both operational performance and the services it delivers across the federal government.