Emerging trends impacting information sharing was the subject of the morning panel at AFCEA’s Solutions symposium. Experts pondered the implications and challenges for sharing data between military and civilian organizations within the U.S. government.

Panelists discussed a range to related topics such as bandwidth issues and connectivity. It was noted that the military is ahead of the civilian government in operating in low bandwidth areas. In the aftermath of hurricane Katrina, civilian government first responders had considerable difficulty establishing communications, explained Pete O’Dell, founder of Swan Island Networks.

Sometimes technology creates new problems. The panelists discussed cognitive issues affecting networking and communications technologies. Edmon Begoli, a researcher at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory noted that software and systems designers must focus on the quality of information and the efficiency of information for users. He added that efficiency and security are vital, key values for users.

Effective policy implementation is another challenge faced by systems designers. Policy is important, explained Bill Marion, the ACC A-6 chief technology officer with Air Combat Command. But he added that while it is important, policies should be implemented lightly enough so as not to stifle innovation.

Bill Cryan, Chief of the Joint Forces Command’s Collaborative Information Environment Management Office, observed policy from the Office of the Secretary of Defense’s office is 3-5 years behind operational needs. He speculates that to truly implement rapid change, it would be necessary to allow the combatant commands the ability to rapidly put policies into place. This procedure would also weed out older and irrelevant policies. Cryan shares that there are roughly 10,000 Defense Department information sharing regulations and that many of then are inconsistent and at odds with each other.

The panelists concluded that institutional willpower, the ability to determine key priorities, is vital to implement information sharing efforts. Marion noted that although most organizations wanted to share information, it is important to create transparency in the federal space. But creating this transparency will require a market driven process that will lead government organizations to seek the right solutions without overly relying on policy implementation.

O’Dell said that information sharing, while very desirable, is hard. The challenge is sharing data securely in a multidimensional, changing environment. But this is a goal that must be met because the environment and the information sharing technology is constantly changing. He noted that in the near future, there will be billions of sensors that will be built into systems and installed in structures or spread across battlefields that will provide a huge flow of data that must be processed and analyzed.

The final panel of the 2010 Joint Warfighting Conference focused on two topics that have been discussed consistently for more than a decade: lack of interoperability and convoluted acquisition. Though the panelists agreed on the problems, their opinions about solutions differed slightly.

Vago Muradian, panel moderater, opened the discussion stating that the need to improve interoperability has been at the heart of the last two administrations and remains a priority in the Obama administration. One topic of particular interest to members of industry in the audience concerned changing import/export rules. Muradian believes that changes to these policies would help ensure interoperability. “Those who are willing to fight and die together should be allowed/willing to share information via interoperable equipment,” he stated.

Dr. A. Wayne Meeks, executive director, DASN Ships, Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Navy, argued that currently interoperability is a matter of mitigating problems. “We find out systems are not interoperable when it doesn’t work rather than paying attention to interoperability in the testing and fielding stage,” Meeks stated. One of the problems of aiming at interoperability earlier in the process is the definition of interoperability itself. The broad definition is facilitating the exchange of information. However, now means changing information between systems and platforms as well as across broad geographic expanses. Systems are expected to perform as if all of them have been engineered together into some super system. “That’s not how we buy them and therein lies the problem,” he noted.

Jeffery P. Bialos, partner, Sutherland Asbill and Brennan, LLP, stated that despite overall, overpowering agreement that coalition warfare is here to stay, not much has been done to make this easier in interoperability and acquisition. Coalition operations are under-planned and under-funded. Speaking to his fellow panelists, Bialos said “You tell me the person at the Pentagon who is in charge of interoperability. I don’t know that anyone can name that person. I don’t think there is a person.”

Bialos continued that “in the 21^st century, it’s not about platforms or weapons. It’s about network-enabled capabilities.” This creates a spectrum of opportunity that in some cases have been successful, including blue force tracking.

What should be done about this? “There is no panacea, no band-aid, but one: Put someone in charge whose focus is on enhancing coalition warfare. Two: develop coalition interoperability plans. Three: provide data to some of our coalition partners now,” Bialos stated. He agrees that some of this is going on now, but there is still a need to work with EU on coalition training, and national export control needs to be reformed.

Representing the congressional view, Valerie Bailey Grasso, specialist, Defense Acquisition Policy, Congressional Research Service, called for improvements in education and the work force. Reductions in the number of acquisition specialists as a result of congressional actions in the 1990s has left the vocation stripped of the experts it now requires. Congress recently moved to fix this problem by authorizing the hiring of several thousand purchasing personnel.

Grasso revealed that her organization took a long hard look at the acquisition problems now occurring in the military. It concluded that while the military talks about jointness, acquisition still occurs on a service level. One “nuclear solution” to this problem is to create a joint organization that is responsible for acquisition for all of the services. It is not the intent of the Congressional Research Service to propose this solution, however, because it believes the armed forces can work out the problems on their own before taking this step becomes necessary.

DISA’s Future COMSATCOM Services Acquisition (FCSA) program may open up a wide new world of SATCOM buying options. And the COMSATCOM arena is all abuzz—with negative and positive speculation—about this new DISA/GSA plan that aims to create a common satellite marketplace.

In this issue of SIGNAL Magazine, Maryann Lawlor acquires the facts about FCSA’s methods and goals in her article, “High-Flying Challenges.”

The two procurement agencies have already taken steps to make FCSA a reality. They debuted the new solicitation Web site, FedBizOpps, in February, and have added two specs to the Federal Supply Schedule 70: Special Item Numbers for SATCOM, transponder capacity and subscription services. The FCSA also will address custom end-to-end solutions when this portion of the program is solidified.

These impending changes worry some companies, especially primary SATCOM providers under contracts that end over the next three years. But, they are cautiously hopeful. Yes, it does widen the playing field, and to military leaders, more vendors means more variety, but will this “open to everyone” approach flood the market with bidders both qualified and unqualified?

The most critical, and most helpful, action is for the government to define its SATCOM requirements early on so companies can plan, says XTAR LLC’s government services vice president, William Schmidt:

The Defense Department … is reluctant to communicate its future requirements to industry or to put its requirements in the Five-Year Defense Plan. The end result is … the Defense Department and to a lesser degree the civil agencies get whatever capacity is left over.

And in many cases, that capacity is just not enough. Because it wasn’t forecast, SATCOM needs go unmet—the satellites are full. Schmidt says:

The typical commercial users have done long-term if not to-end-of-life leases even before the satellites were launched. And I think it’s only going to get worse.

Inmarsat Government Services President Rebecca Cowen-Hirsch has a slightly different take on the FCSA: The most important aspect is an open line of communication between COMSAT companies and government agencies. She also questions if it’s possible for a mission-critical capability like communications to be handled via satellite, if SATCOM vendors with little to no experience are allowed in the bidding competition. It’s not as simple as purchasing office supplies when lives and missions are on the line.

Cowen-Hirsch wonders whether or not operators’ requirements can be fulfilled in an agile fashion with a meaningful distinction between the Schedule 70 providers? It’s not clear to her yet.

The mostly static federal bureaucracy can use an entrepreneurial FCSA shot to the arm—but will this new acquisition process just add more layers of red tape to a system trying to streamline? Will it work smoothly, or does the FCSA have too many kinks? How about other potential methods? Please share your ideas.

Managing the myriad programs designed to provide border security has proved challenging. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has launched a variety of technology efforts designed to enhance border security. Likewise, civilian firms are deeply involved with DHS in supporting these programs. Two panels running Wednesday examined the government and industry perspectives of coordinating border security.

To adequately track the millions of people crossing U.S. borders every day, the DHS launched the US VISIT program. Initiated in 2004, the program logs and records the identities of foreign nationals entering the United States. To date, more than 100 million people are enrolled in US VISIT, said Steve Yonkers, deputy assistant director, Business Policy and Training, Program Integration and Mission Training, US VISIT, DHS.  As the program has expanded, it began to provide services to other organizations in the DHS, the Defense Department and intelligence communities.

Yonkers explained that as of 2009, US VISIT has expanded its biometric identification capabilities to electronically record all 10 of a visitor’s fingerprints. Once a customer is enrolled into the system, when they return to the United States, they only have to imprint four fingerprints for verification. The DHS has also tested mobile identification systems and created an information sharing plan with the Department of Justice which allows officials to search for criminal records.

Art Macius, chief of staff at the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) added that organizations such as his and the DHS must also share information with their international counterparts. This international cooperation includes efforts such as cargo screening for commercial aircraft though efforts such as the Secure Flight program. Macius said that by this spring, the program will work with U.S. airlines to screen baggage and air cargo, and that the coverage will extend to international carriers by the end of the year.

Representatives of commercial firms discussed the DHS programs their organizations were supporting during the closing session on Wednesday. Panel moderator Paul Druckman, director of DHS business development at Accenture outlined the business environment for providing the biometric component of US VISIT. He noted that the DHS has tested a variety of methods to record visitors’ biometric data when they enter and exit the country. From Accenture’s perspective, Druckman sees a very dynamic period for technology companies providing solutions for DHS and for similar international organizations. This growth of solutions will be followed by best of breed solutions and finally a period of industry consolidation.

Installing new equipment into legacy installations remains a challenge. Gena Alexa, a partner with Unisys’ Customs and Border Protection division shared the details of work her firm performed in support of the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI). The goal of WHTI is to provide U.S. citizens with RFID chip-equipped passports and identification cards to facilitate cross-border travel. Alexa described how Unisys installed RFID readers in the nation’s border crossings, noting that each facility was different. The company fitted 62 sites across the country by the June 1, 2009 deadline. The new technology cut customer wait times by 25 percent, she said.

While many conferences suffer from waning interest as panel session after panel session and speaker after speaker present valuable information over two days, this year’s AFCEA Homeland Security conference proved to be quite the opposite. The Thursday afternoon sessions were nearly as full as the presentations that took place on Wednesday, at least in part because of the last topic discussion: procurement.

Before delving into this very important topic, however, experts discussed the balance between security and privacy, particularly when it comes to personal information. Mary Dixon, director of the Manpower Data Center, OSD, said that the issue is not only determining who can share information but also the larger issue of who should have access to what data.

For example, the guard at a military base gate does not need to know the details of a criminal background check of a person who wants to enter a base but would need to know that this person should be directed to the Visitors Center before being allowed to access the base.

Other problems loom, not the least of which is the sheer volume of information the government collects about citizens even when issues of privacy do not exist. Because no single agency could be expected to sift through all the data that has been collected about citizens, the government must focus on turning this data into information, Dixon said. This requires a common language and common markings for specific data sets, she recommended.

The final panel of the conference featured some lively discussion about the problems and possibilities in procurement and also some teases about what new programs, projects and products are waiting in the wings. Panelists hinted at opportunities to respond to RFPs in the very near future as well as throughout the year. Although budgets are being cut, DHS still has some funding available and the department’s procurement officers intend to make the most of it.

Soraya Correa, DHS Office of Procurement Operations, said the future includes a very heavy investment in information technology, particularly as the DHS HQ is built out. In addition, all the panelists encouraged small businesses to bid, bid, bid. DHS has and will continue to purchase many of the products and services it needs from small companies, but these firms must take the initiative to respond to RFPs and bid on contracts.

More of the DHS’ money is likely to be spent on services rather than products, but the work on securing the borders will continue and grow, offering a plethora of different opportunities for businesses to act upon. In fact, a new acquisition plan in this area is due to be announced within the next 30 days, Tiffany Hickson of the CBP procurement directorate revealed.

Also, although the EAGLE contract still has life in it, the DHS already is discussing the next generation — although the panelists couldn’t agree on whether it should be called EAGLE II or EAGLE Follow-on. Regardless of the name, it will take advantage of the lessons learned from EAGLE I and as a result two solicitations will be issued that will be slightly staggered in timing. Expect to see more about this RFP in the near future.

So what’s your opinion about homeland security? Do you think the formation of DHS was a necessity or a mistake? What do you need to know about DHS so you can better serve both the department and the country? Comment, question, state — this is your opportunity!

It’s rare that an audience of industry and service members at all ranks get the chance to hear first hand from the first of a kind. But that was the case after eating lunch on Wednesday of WEST 2010. Vice Adm. Jack Dorsett, USN, the Navy’s first N2/N6 may have begun his speech by wondering why he was among other high-ranking military experts at the conference, but he followed through with revealing the latest approaches the Navy is taking to achieve information dominance.

The Navy is developing new mini-road maps of sorts that address nearly a dozen topics, including undersea dominance, maritime ballistic C2 and improved maritime domain awareness. Rather than write lengthy tomes on this topics that are more likely to grow rusty than be read, these topics are being tackled with short – 30- rather than 300-page – descriptions of where the Navy is going.

Perhaps of most interest to the industry members in the audience was Adm. Dorsett’s announcement that two industry days are already scheduled to take place where even classified information will be shared. The first one, in June, will feature Navy representatives laying out their requirements; the second, scheduled for September, will be industry’s turn to come to the table with their ideas and solutions.

Truth be told, many may say they’ve heard this all before. But somehow, when Adm. Dorsett explained the new plans, the cadence in his voice seemed to present an air of certainty unheard since perhaps the days of Adm. Art Cebrowski and talk of transformation. Time will tell.

What do you think? Is this really a new approach, or just a new buzzword name for the same old concepts?

A person recognizable to anyone who has been in military information technology for a few years offered MILCOM 2009 attendees insights into where the Defense Information Systems Agency is headed. Tony Montemarano, component acquisition executive, DISA, revealed that the agency is working on a campaign plan in which the word “convergence” is used time and time again. The plan, which is in the midst of final modifications, comprises three lines of operations: enterprise infrastructure, command and control, and information sharing.

In the area of enterprise infrastructure, Montemarano explained that it is important for companies to know that DISA operates networks, computing environments and entire systems, and each of these has its own set of business processes and different cost-recovery schedules. In this way, the agency is still stovepiped, he allowed.

The focus today is on convergence so that warfighters can plug into the cloud or network to get the information they need. To this end, DISA is trying to drive anonymity out of the network so that troops as well as DOD personnel can access the network from wherever they are and that access is attribute-based. “That’s what we’re focusing on. How do you do that?” Montemarano asked. At DISA, the program is called Enterprise User, he revealed.

Today, DISA is moving toward everything over Internet protocol (EoIP). This approach causes some problems, Montemarano allowed. “In my business, technology doesn’t bother me; technology doesn’t cause me headaches. Culture causes me headaches. Getting people who have always done something one way to adapt to the way other organizations do things is critical to getting them to work together,” he stated.

The danger of EoIP is the same as putting all your eggs in one basket, Montemarano admitted. But it is exactly for this reason that information assurance and security become all that more important. This is particularly true as DISA makes the nonsecure Internet protocol router network (NIPRnet) a true intranet, he said.

Montemarano was honest and upfront about the problems the agency has faced with the Net-Enabled Command Capability. “It didn’t do what we expected it to do. The department is currently rethinking how it wants to go forward. We are going to take this rather significant effort and cut it back. We’re going to go incremental with very small incremental pieces each and every year. The objective and the requirements documents remain in place. We are going to continue to move with a service-oriented architecture, loosely coupled net-centric environment, but we’re going to do it in a more incremental fashion. That tells you something. If you’re going to do it over time, the destination is probably going to change,” he explained.

In the current environment, policy has not kept pace with technology to enable the information sharing that today’s capabilities offer. Combatant commanders still have to look at multiple screens to see all of the data streaming into their operations centers and to obtain total situational awareness.

To solve this problem, Montemarano stated that these capabilities must be brought together as an enterprise service. “We haven’t gotten there yet, but we are honing in on a solution,” he shared. Details of the solution could not be divulged because the competition to provide the capability is still underway.

Richard J. Byrne, vice president, command and control center, The MITRE Corporation, wrapped up the unclassified discussion on the first day of MILCOM 2009 by proposing that today’s acquisition problems should be viewed in a different manner. Rather than thinking about how to improve what the U.S. government is doing, perhaps agencies—the U.S. Defense Department included—need to come at the problems from an entirely new direction—a very complex direction.

Complexity theory can be applied in a number of areas—from acquisition to cyberthreats, Byrne explained. Emergent behavior is one of the unique aspects of complexity theory and refers to what happens when many different yet related individual items are combined. These complex systems adapt by cooperating, repeating and responding, and this results in emergent behavior, which is unpredictable. Referring to Stephen Wolfram from his book A New Kind of Science, Byrne said this means that every major complex system that exists exhibits emergent behavior; consequently, those working on complex problems or with complex networks must start thinking about them in new ways.

In terms of acquisition of new systems, procurement officials must be willing to accept less than 100 percent solutions confident that products will be constantly evolving. “If you look at any of the major programs, many of them come from places such as Skunk Works. In fact, 60 percent or more of what the U.S. Army is using today in the theater of operations is not from programs of record. And yet, the dollars of the programs of record are not going into these projects. Most of the things that we’re fighting the war with today are built with a fraction of the funding spent on programs of record,” he related.

Many contend that while these products—such as the Predator—are good individually, they do not integrate well into the systems of systems the military is trying to create. Byrnes contends, however, that once again this problem must be approached differently. Instead of looking at innovations as different, the integration issue should be looked at as different segments that reach out to each other and bleed into each other to some extent.

The difference between how products from programs of record and how innovative products are built is a matter of different assumptions, Byrne explained. Innovators take into account the environment when in the design phase; if the environment the product will be deployed in is not considered from the beginning, the system will fail, he added.

Lt. Gen. Ted F. Bowlds, USAF, commander, Electronic Systems Center, Hanscom Air Force Base, delivered the luncheon speech at MILCOM 2009. Gen. Bowlds stated that the world is changing so fast that it is impossible to predict what innovations will develop as well as threats the U.S. will face in the next 10 to 15 years. “Five years out is about all we can go,” he said.

Although irregular warfare is the buzzword today, in the spectrum of conflict, it doesn’t represent any more than 10 percent to 15 percent of the threat today, he said. Despite this low percentage, it is consuming a lot of the U.S. military’s time. “I tell people if you get three individuals with an attitude and an explosive, you’ve got a problem on your hands. They can go anywhere they want to and take that problem and make it your problem these days,” he stated.

Adding to the challenges are budget realities. The way the U.S. Defense Department does business with industry is going to start to change very drastically, he said. The top priorities for the fiscal year 2012 budget will be influenced by “a lack of appetite for spending for DOD” and other pressures, such as the economy and health care. As a result, the military budget is going to come down, the general noted. “The spending spree that we all got to enjoy for the past five or six years is going to evaporate away from us. So, we’re going to have to be smarter in doing what we can with what we’ve got, or we’re going to have to be very, very smart in buying what we need,” he added.

At the heart of the next generation in the military is creation of data, systems and ideas, the general noted. Gen. Bowlds noted that if the military is not careful, its acquisition process is going to go the “way of the dinosaur” because technology is moving so quickly. About 90 percent of what is used at ESC rides on commercial technology today. “So over the years, we’ve been trying to figure out how to tighten up our acquisition,” he stated. The goal at ESC is to get solutions into the hands of the warfighter within 12 months.

In terms of fighting threats in the cyberspace, virtualization of networks may hold the key, the general allowed. By creating a number of virtual networks, data can be stored in different locations, so it is a constantly moving target. “It’s like being a chameleon in the cyber domain,” he stated.

BOSTON – October 19, 2009 – MILCOM 2009 opened today with a speech by David Gergen, CNN commentator and editor at-large for US. News and World Report. Gergen, who has worked for four U.S. presidents, pointed out that the relationship between president and military has changed over the past two decades. The differences have evolved as the men who occupied the Oval Office and held the position of commander-in-chief of the military themselves did not have first-hand military experience.

President Barack Obama appears to be at least stemming the tide of this change by putting more four-stars in places of power than any president before him, Gergen pointed out. These include Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, USA (Ret.) as leader of the Department of Veterans Affairs and Adm. Dennis Blair, USN (Ret.) as the Director of National Intelligence.

However, one of the best decisions Obama made after taking office was to ask Robert M. Gates to stay on as secretary of the U.S. Defense Department into the new administration. “Obama looks to him with an honest respect and has given him more and more latitude. I would say that Bob Gates right now is probably the most powerful Secretary of Defense that I can remember,” Gergen said. The president supports Gates’ efforts to do what he needs to do to get things done, and that applies to the weapons systems and will apply to the Quadrennial Defense Review as well, he added.

Gates has taken a strong view on a number of activities since he began working under President Obama, including strategy, Gergen went on. For example, the SECDEF has been focused on the idea that the Defense Department concentrate on waging the current war, not planning for the next one. Evidence of this is the cancellation of the T-SAT program and Gates’ promise to overhaul the military acquisition process, as evidenced by the decision to hold off on the number of F-22s the department will purchase and changes in the Future Combat Systems program.

These types of decisions are likely to continue as the Defense Department feels more of the budget crunch. While concern about the Chinese military is important, a growing concern is whether the Chinese will continue to invest in the United States, Gergen shared. The balance the administration is trying to reach is between how much spending must continue to keep the military strong and how much deficit the nation should continue to take on. “Previous administrations sort of built a wall around the Pentagon and said, ‘Don’t touch these things.’ That is no longer the case,” he added.

Although Gates is being given a lot of leeway on many issues, one issue that the White House will weigh in strongly on will be future operations in Afghanistan. Although the SECDEF will likely have a lot of say in what will occur there, it is Obama who is in the spotlight when it comes to future activity in Afghanistan. The president has demonstrated that he can be tough on many issues; however, the question still remains about how tough he is willing to be in that country. He must begin to move in one direction soon, however, because not to take a stand appears to others—including U.S. allies and the Taliban—that the U.S. is wavering. “To decide not to decide is to invite defeat, in my judgment,” Gergen stated.

This is an era in which the U.S. is being challenged, Gergen concluded. Looking 20 to 30 years in the future, the question is not whether China or India will be “at the table” but rather whether the United States will still be there. “We’re not going to spend our way to being a great power, and we’re certainly not going to borrow our way into being a great power; we’re going to innovate our way there. And innovation remains the greatest single hope for this country in the long term,” he said.