Network-centric operations can improve the effectiveness and efficiency of any business operation. By employing the power of net centricity, the government, businesses and personal lives can be improved significantly. But, as with any endeavor, we must adopt new approaches even for network-centric operations.

Information assurance, encompassing such objectives as data availability, integrity and confidentiality, is a growing concern in the enormous data processing and communications enterprise run by the U.S. Defense Department and the underlying commercial infrastructure. The Defense Department’s network, known collectively as the Global Information Grid, is powerful but fragile. It also is under constant attack.

The U.S. Army’s LandWarNet program, the focus of Army information technology modernization, is fragmented, unsecure, expensive and not standardized. This comes from Lt. Gen. Jeffrey A. Sorenson, USA, the U.S. Army chief information officer (CIO)/G-6. He believes that the Army will fix these problems, but it will take a coordinated plan to do so.

Tactical communications have changed much over the years. This will not come as a surprise to anyone, but often we become caught up in the small, incremental shifts that occur each month or year and fail to recognize how fundamentally things have changed.

Do not blame Don Herring if his business plan for the next decade seems simple at first glance. After all, the senior vice president in charge of AT&T Government Solutions believes he is poised to cement his division’s reputation as a key provider of federal information technology services with dozens of new civilian and defense contracts that could be worth billions of dollars.