Web-Based Services Move Closer to Full Operation

Signal, May 2008 by Boland, Rita

Capabilities that significantly alter how the military and its partners collaborate are poised for their full implementation.

A major Defense Information Systems Agency program is serving as a transformational change agent for the U.S. Defense Department by blazing a path toward the much desired network-centric method of data sharing. The system, which enables military information exchange in a trusted environment with dynamic and flexible users and needs, already has begun providing capabilities to customers. It is about to enter the initial operational test and evaluation phase.

The Net-Centric Enterprise Services (NCES) are a set of capabilities that support network-centric warfare operations and information sharing. These services provide the framework to enable warfighting, business and intelligence activities of the Global Information Grid (GIG). Some of the network-centric services, such as information security and identity management, act as foundational blocks while others support user needs to collaborate or access authoritative data sources. The latter category includes chat rooms and information discovery tools.

The NCES allows users to find and access relevant information and to expose data for others to discover. Users also will be able to collaborate more effectively by employing video and audio Web conferencing, instant messenging and file sharing. The NCES enables the distribution of data to forward-deployed areas and increases data access. The system employs service-oriented architecture (SOA) to evolve military capabilities and to share information.

The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), which has responsibility for the NCES, is developing and creating necessary services through its ABC -adopt, buy, create - acquisition model. The approach allows the agency to find the best capabilities and then to deliver them to users without having to develop each service from scratch. According to Rebecca Harris, program director for GIG enterprise services at DISA, the policy is a main reason DISA has been able to acquire the NCES capabilities and deliver them in an incremental and quick fashion, saving money and time.

The NCES concept was approved in 2004, and Milestone B was achieved in March 2007. Milestone C, which authorizes the initial operational test and evaluation phase, is expected near the publication date of this article. The Joint Interoperability Test Command performed the testing with oversight from the Office of the secretary of Defense, Operational Test and Evaluation Directorate.

The outcome of the test and evaluation will be used in the Full Deployment Decision Review, which will give NCES personnel the authority to scale up services to support a greater number of users, weapons systems and business systems and to move to full operational capability during a 12-month period. The services will be exposed in registries and available to a larger military user base supporting all branches, agencies and combatant commands. "It really is getting new information and services visible and accessible so they can be used department-wide," Harris explains.

The fully operational NCES will be very different in nature from its original conception. It began as a software development program, but with the advent of DISA's new acquisition strategy, program officials started leveraging ABC and transformed the program into managed service providers. Personnel began to take advantage of the best practices and products already available as opposed to developing capabilities from the bottom up. Services already in operation are performing well, and DISA personnel are looking forward to rolling out capabilities more broadly soon.

Harris describes the NCES as a transformational change agent for the Defense Department. DISA has encountered several policies or traditional methods of achieving results that the agency has to change to move to network centricity. One of the major adjustments has been the switch from a "need to know" environment to a "need to share" environment. Throughout testing of the NCES, the strategy of officials has been to create new solutions to problems. When they make a decision to deploy a capability, they question how to make it work in the network-centric environment and how to perform operations. DISA wants to ensure that customers have the best end-user experience possible. Harris believes that in addition to delivering state-of-the-art capabilities, the NCES has laid the foundation to transform how DISA tests, certifies and operationally sustains capabilities in the network-centric environment.

The NCES capabilities are categorized into four product lines: collaboration, content discovery and delivery, SOA Foundation and the Army Knowledge Online/Defense Knowledge Online (AKO/DKO) portal. Under the collaboration product line, DISA uses two collaboration tools referred to as Button 1 and Button 2, which are both commercial-based technologies and products. The arrangement is innovative for the military because operational users can select which service best fits their needs. As more customers select one button (or service) versus the other, the capability that experiences higher use obtains a greater Defense Department market share.