Sailors aboard the aircraft carrier USS George Washington (CVN 73) are taking part in the Division in the Spotlight (DITS) program to sustain operational readiness and excellence throughout all divisions.

The DITS program takes a comprehensive look at George Washington to ensure material, manpower and administrative readiness are maintained at all levels.

"The purpose of DITS is to keep all the departments up to speed on what is required of them," said Aviation Electronics Technician 2nd Class Alyssa Toomey, who is assigned to George Washington's training department.

DITS includes a review of all personnel aboard, making sure every crew member is trained and mission-ready.

"DITS is important because if you don't keep track of training then you have an undertrained ship," said Toomey. "Even though we're in a phase where we won't be going out to sea, we have to keep up our training requirements because anyone could be asked to go underway on another ship, and they would have to be prepared to go."

Each department will be reviewed individually to identify any issues they may have.

"DITS is just a way to improve the ship as a whole and fix the small issues that are usually overlooked," said Damage Contolman 2nd Class Shana Simpkins. "It lets divisions know the issues they need to fix and it's just a way to improve the department as a whole so that the whole ship can shine."

Feedback during the DITS process is intended to be constructive and conducted with the purpose of improving the ship's operational readiness.

"Preparing for DITS is just being ready to accept all types of feedback and keeping a positive attitude," said Simpkins. "It's important to be proactive to set the ship up for success in its next 25 years."

At the conclusion of DITS, all departments will report discrepancies and corrective actions to the ship's executive officer. The effectiveness of the corrective actions from this DITS process will be reported during the next regularly scheduled DITS inspection.

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