Jonathan Witter was appointed the Principal Deputy Director in January 2021. In this capacity, he assists the Director, Defense Finance and Accounting Service (DFAS) in overseeing the day-to-day accounting and finance activities of the Department of Defense (DoD). DFAS employs over 11,000 DoD civilian and military personnel at 10 locations throughout the United States, Europe, and the Pacific. In 2020, the agency disbursed over $623.3 billion by processing 137.3 million pay transactions to 6.6 million military personnel, federal civilian employees, military retirees, and annuitants; 12.4 million commercial invoices; and 4.3 million travel payments. Responsible for 1,379 active DoD appropriations, DFAS is the trust fund manager for $619.7 billion in foreign military sales and $1.27 trillion in military retirement and health benefit funds. Last year, DFAS maintained more than 98 million general ledger accounts containing billions of transactions and handled accounts for worldwide operations and multi-disciplined appropriations of DoD.
Prior to this role, Mr. Witter served as the DFAS Director’s Deputy for Operations where he led the agency’s mission-based organizations, which provide finance and accounting global shared services support to the Department of Defense and other non-DoD agencies. He also has served as the DFAS Director’s Deputy for Strategy and Support, where he was responsible for developing and guiding the implementation of the agency’s strategy and directing the agency’s mission support activities. Mr. Witter was director of the DFAS Columbus network where he oversaw a full spectrum of accounting, disbursing, call center, and systems operations supporting the Department of the Air Force, DoD’s Acquisition Commands, and multiple Defense Agencies. He joined DFAS in 2006 as the Director, of Business Requirements and Integration, and led financial management modernization initiatives for DFAS and DoD.
Current role