Category archive for ‘Event Coverage’ 
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Secure Work: The Largest Catch 22 of All
Delays in obtaining security clearances are actually the second biggest problem for companies of any size. The first is what those who want to work with the intelligence community affectionately call the chicken-and-egg problem. Getting a security clearance for corporate personnel is not possible without having a contract that requires secured personnel; however, companies cannot be awarded a contract that requires security clearances until they have personnel that have received security clearances.
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Working With the Three-Letter Agencies
Representatives from the DIA, NGA and NSA shared their insights about how to get a foot in the door at intelligence community agencies during the second panel presentation at the AFCEA Small Business Intelligence Forum this morning in Fairfax, Virginia. All agreed that it requires more than the standard marketing approach but emphasized that it is worth the investment in time and talent.
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Representatives Describe Their Agencies’ Needs
An impressive panel featuring participants from the some of the most well-known “three-lettered” intelligence organizations got down to the nuts and bolts of intelligence agencies’ requirements. The discussion, which took place this morning at the AFCEA Small Business Intelligence Forum in Fairfax, Virginia, also centered on where the organizations plan to go in the near future in the information technology realm.
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Hurdles Abound for Small Business, Intelligence Community Cooperation
Dr. William Nolte, research professor and director of the Center for Intelligence Research and Education, University of Maryland, laid the problems on the line regarding industry and intelligence community organizations during the AFCEA Small Business Intelligence Forum, which took place today in Fairfax, Virginia. Ranging from determining who is in charge to the acquisition process, Nolte forthrightly shared that the many of the systems that facilitate government-industry partnerships are broken.
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Technology Is Neither Bottleneck Nor Solution
This is my take on the AFCEA, Northcom and George Mason University conference on “Inter-agency, Allied and Coalition Information Sharing,” which was covered on SIGNAL Scape last week. No, we still can’t connect the dots as well as hoped and never will, but conferees agreed that what matters most is the thoughtful and trusting use that humans could make of what information manages to flow through IT systems, however improperly they may be connected.
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Leadership and Information Sharing
The Obama administration can take certain key steps to improve the ability to recognize and deal with national security threats, according to recommendations in “Nation at Risk,” a report issued by the The Markle Foundation Task Force on National Security in the Information Age. Jeff Smith of Arnold & Porter LLP, a steering committee member for the report, presented it yesterday at the AFCEA SOLUTIONS conference on information sharing.
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The Barriers to Information Sharing
The dramatic culture shift that needs to happen for government agencies to embrace change kept coming up at the SOLUTIONS conference like the refrain of a popular song: agencies must move from an emphasis on risk avoidance to a focus on risk management. Without that shift, the quest to achieve 100 percent risk avoidance is quixotic at best; more realistically, it hampers agencies’ ability to share information.
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What Needs to Change?
Chris Gunderson of the Naval Postgraduate School posited some interesting ideas during yesterday afternoon’s plenary sessions about why everyone keeps hearing the same things about changes that need to be made. Certain things, he suggested, we should just acknowledge and move past.
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Improving Our Net-Centricity
Command and control (C2) still hasn’t evolved with the times, according to an afternoon plenary session at AFCEA SOLUTIONS today. Dr. David S. Alberts, director of research for the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense, networks and information integration, spoke on the maturity and agility of C2. Alberts explained missions are increasingly complex, with implications on command and control:
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Common Themes Vex Coalition Operations
Although there has been a great deal of progress in streamlining information sharing among allied forces over the past decade, many impediments remain. As the panelists at this morning’s session on the challenges surrounding information sharing in a coalition environment noted, the devil is in the details.
