WARNER ROBINS, Ga. — At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, many employers found ways to let people work from home, including Robins Air Force Base.
"We were able to do that for over 8,000 of our customers, and they were able to take those PCs at home and telework within 72 hours when the pandemic first hit," Danielle Little said.
Little helps lead the newly-formed Digital Air Base Wing responsible for making that happen.
While there have been many challenges navigating the pandemic and telework environments, she says it ultimately pushed her team to get more creative.
"We had two of our team members who recently competed in an Air Force level competition, and they programmed a bot to automate a 48-hour process into four minutes," she said.
Little says accomplishments like that free up both time and money to explore integrating technology in other areas like Security Forces.
"They're able to simulate different scenarios such as someone running the gate. They can simulate that with this software and sensors and equipment that they use," she said.
Like with much of the work done at Robins, the work of the Digital Air Base Wing affects Air Force capabilities on the global stage.
"Just look at the war-fighting capabilities," she said. "If you look at the unmanned aircraft and some of those things, we need people to focus on the latest technology to ensure that we have the advantage as far as the capabilities and capacity that we need to meet our mission that is ever-growing, ever-changing. So what digitizing tools and processes and automating repetition does, is frees up our time to be more innovative."