Editor's notebook

CHIPS, Winter, 2004 by Sharon Anderson

As I'm writing to you most Americans are busy with holiday preparations, but many of our U.S. military personnel are deployed and serving far from home. I want to dedicate this issue of CHIPS to the brave men and women of the Armed Forces, who daily risk their lives for our freedom. I know that I join all Americans in saying thank you--we pray for your safe return.

In this issue we are delighted to feature the Information Professional (IP) Officer Community. Lt. Cmdr. Danelle Barrett provides a fascinating glimpse into their work and expertise in information, command and control and space systems. Please go to page 12 to read about IPs at the "tip of the spear."

The photos at left illustrate Information Systems Technicians (ITs) in action. ITs use state-of-the-art multi-media technology to execute information transfer, working with fiber optics, digital microwave, and tactical and commercial satellites on a global basis. They operate, manage and provide hardware and software support to multi-media Automated Information Systems (AIS) including: mainframes, mini and microcomputers, Local Area Networks (LAN), Wide Area Networks (WAN) and much more. IPs and ITs work together to execute the Department of the Navy IT vision.

It is a fascinating time to be working in any area of information technology in the Navy, and in the larger community of the Department of Defense. We are always eager to hear your IT success story so please contact us at chips@spawar.navy.mil.

Back at home--CHIPS Assistant Editor, Nancy Reasor has been working on a massive undertaking updating our subscriber addresses. Nancy does this continually and she has just finished consolidating mailings for several large commands. We want to thank Chuck Little from SPAWAR Headquarters, who updated the list of headquarters subscribers for us. Please contact Nancy at chips@spawar.navy.mil with address changes or if you are having any problems receiving your issue of CHIPS.

CHIPS was on the road fall 2003 to a few technology conferences where we were delighted to meet new subscribers and many longtime readers. Welcome to our new subscribers and thank you to the readers who stopped to say hello.