As fascinated (OK obsessed) as I am with the lack of trust between the Congress and the IC with its attendant impact on national security, its time to move on! I thought DNI Denny Blair's first public address on June 8th at an INSA dinner would provide more than enough material for this month edition, but having sat through it in person I can't bare to review a "dare to be bland" overview of the IC by its CEO. Had this speech been a Wall Street Analyst guidance call I believe there would have been an immediate rush to "short IC" based on lack of strategic direction and tired fundamentals.

Network systems are similar to icebergs. Less than 10 percent of their volume is visible to the user of an application. Almost all of the hidden code, measured in hundreds of thousands of lines of logic, is invisible in the operating system, in the database management software, in security safeguards and in communication routines. The problem with such software is that for each application—and the U.S. Defense Department has more than 7,000 major software projects—contractors will develop the hidden coding to suit separate requirements.

For federal chief information officers (CIOs), it is the best of times and the worst of times. The broader, less literary question is: Do CIOs matter?

The preeminence of the expanded use of cyberspace, the desire for more openness in government, and the demands for faster and better information sharing within and among enterprises—particularly in the context of inter-agency and coalition information sharing—have changed fundamentally the demands of information security. The wider reach of our networks and the quest for timely, relevant information have improved decision-making but have made us more dependent on cyberspace and more vulnerable.

Information security has not kept up with information exploitation as the United States fully embraced the information age. The greater reliance on information systems across the entire breadth of government, military and civilian activities has opened the nation to cyberattacks on its military systems, its vital infrastructure and its economy as a whole.