Technology Converges At Information Agency

Signal, Apr 2007 by Ackerman, Robert K

Architectures and Internet protocols meld communications, computing.

The convergence of media and services in commercial Cyberspace has its counterpart in the defense arena, where experts are tapping commercial technologies and standards to provide seamless information access to warfighters and decision makers.

Leading this charge is the Defense Information Systems Agency, or DISA. Responsible for providing global U.S. military forces with needed communications connectivity, the agency has embraced the age of Web 2.0. It is adapting new technologies to enhance existing programs while it juggles broad-based innovation with support to the warfighter.

DISA's two top priorities are speed and assurity, states David Mihelcic, chief technology officer for DISA and its principal director of Global Information Grid-Enterprise Services (GIG-ES) engineering. Speed is essential for delivering information and services to the customer effectively. Assurity encompasses both ensuring security-keeping out interlopers-and guaranteeing that systems perform as they are supposed to when needed. Often the agency balances speed and functional capability, but it will not compromise security, he emphasizes.

"We're in the middle of an ongoing cyberwar around the globe," Mihelcic states, adding that many Defense Department and commercial servers were hit with major attacks in February. DISA is demanding that all of its vendors demonstrate that their products are secure and that they also understand the pedigree of the software they are providing the agency.

Culture is another obstacle to be overcome. Achieving full network centricity will require a shift away from information possession to information sharing. Mihelcic relates that many people view information as power and may harbor that information to strengthen their power base. This confronts the challenge of departing from need-to-know in favor of embracing need-to-share.

DISA provides core enterprise services for information sharing in all Defense Department-wide area information systems through the Net-Centric Enterprise Services (NCES) program. But the agency faces several fundamental requirements to ensure true data sharing.

These include having a standards-based infrastructure that allows Defense Department programs to share information more readily. NCES is providing the standards and core infrastructure to enable that sharing, Mihelcic says. The agency already has fielded an evaluation capability baseline-a set of pilots-that are in use by pilot customers on both the nonsecure and secret Internet protocol router networks (NIPRNET and SIPRNET).

The commercial sector is helping provide some solutions. Mihelcic relates that DISA purchased a managed enterprise service from IBM that provides human-to-human collaboration on both the NIPRNET and the SIPRNET. He emphasizes that this acquisition was undertaken as a managed service, with DISA buying no hardware or software. "What we're buying is collaboration as a capability," he says.

Another major NCES element is a portal that will open into the U.S. Army's Army Knowledge Online (AKO), which is morphing into Defense Knowledge Online. This will enable NCES users not only to access that system's services but also to open access to other services. Ultimately, it may serve as the single portal for all users to access all Defense Department information, Mihelcic offers.

The agency is working closely with the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Networks and Information Integration (ASD Nil) on the departmentwide data strategy. This effort focuses on service-oriented architectures, or SOAs (SIGNAL Magazine, January 2007, page 49), and Web services to share data. Mihelcic states that DISA is in partnership with the ASD NII on this effort, as the NCES program is driven by the department's data strategy initiatives. The agency is working with that office to help provide NCES services and by supporting some of the office's pilot efforts.

Joint command and control (C^sup 2^) traditionally has operated through the Global Command and Control System-Joint (GCCS-J) and the Global Combat Support System-Joint (GCSS-J). It now is moving into the Net-Enabled Command and Control (NECC) system. Mihelcic explains that the agency's C^sup 2^ systems build on the standards and services that the NCES is delivering.

NECC has achieved its milestone A, and its directors are working on the documentation necessary to move to milestone B, which is still on track to take place this fall. And, the program has begun some of its piloting technology development activities. Mihelcic relates that the program is taking some existing C^sup 2^ capabilities from the services and morphing them to be compliant with NECC's next-generation SOA-based architecture.

While DISA is not developing any NECC software yet, the program's technology development phase still is allowing the agency to move those C^sup 2^ capabilities from legacy architectures to its next-generation architecture. The goal is to move rapidly from milestone B to milestone C, which would permit moving some developmental capability into production, Mihelcic says.