Overcoming Challenge Is the Mission for U.S. Coast Guard C5I Service Center

The Coast Guard’s C5ISC—short for Command, Control, Communication, Computer, Cyber and Intelligence Service Center—has a long and complex technology to-do list that includes updating ashore and afloat command and control systems, implementing zero-trust cybersecurity, adding to the arsenal of mobile communications, moving toward a cloud computing environment and exploring artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities.

“The mission of the service center is delivering technical solutions for mission success. We support every Coast Guard operational mission—all 11 of them—and every Coast Guard member executing those missions,” said Capt. Kevin Carroll, the C5ISC commanding officer. “We are an enabler for Coast Guard men and women to do their mission. Now that could be an operational mission; that could be the business side of the Coast Guard as well as business processes. But our mission is to provide them technology so they can do their jobs successfully, safely and hopefully easier.”

With five Cs already in its name, the center could almost add a sixth for “challenge.” It was created shortly before the COVID-19 virus stormed the globe, and officials were faced with consolidating multiple centers into one, merging operational technology and information technology workforces—each with its own culture, and rapidly adopting teleworking technologies so that the Coast Guard could continue the mission during a raging pandemic.

The center continues to push toward mobile communications and greater collaboration, which accelerated during the pandemic. The adoption of Microsoft’s Office 365 allows better collaboration and improved business processes. Capt. Carroll also touted the benefits of software-defined phones. “I can have one phone number ring different people at the same time in different locations. Those are the kind of things that we’re looking at starting to put into place and really have into place in the next year.”

The C5I Service Center also is helping the Coast Guard to update its command and control systems both ashore and afloat. For vessels afloat, officials expect to deploy the latest version of SeaWatch. “We are going to be releasing SeaWatch 4.0, which is a major architectural change. We’ve had some issues with processing power and the amount of sensors we can take in at one time, so we’re going to be tackling some of that,” Capt. Carroll offered.

The ashore system is known as Looking Glass and can be tailored to specific needs in different locations. “You don’t get the same Looking Glass in New York City and Houston, which are very different ports to manage. You get the ability to have tools that you can then configure for the information you need and the views you want,” he explained.

Adding to the mission complexity, the center must help the Coast Guard communicate with the Defense Department, the various homeland security agencies, state, local and tribal law enforcement organizations, NATO allies, and a growing list of Indo-Pacific partner nations. “Now we have smaller nations that we’re dealing with, as well as the local communities, particularly in Guam. And so, you’ve got to be able to talk to all of these different agencies and without having a multitude of systems. You want to keep that number down, so that’s one of our biggest challenges. And it’s been one of our successes in this past year, being able to digitally communicate with Department of Homeland Security, and then on the same application an hour later, you’re talking to a Defense Department agency.”

The center also provides subject matter experts to advise Coast Guard organizations on, for example, the adoption of AI technologies and implementing zero-trust cybersecurity, and it helps service members with day-to-day technology problem-solving. “We spend some time doing the immediate troubleshooting that boils up to our levels. You don’t support every member in the Coast Guard without having some immediate fires that need attention,” Capt. Carroll stated.

And if all of that were not challenging enough, the C5ISC team plays a central role in the Coast Guard’s transition into a data-centric service, a key part of the service’s modernization efforts. “Modernization is creating a demand signal for us in the service center, and we are looking forward to those challenges. I think we are going to be foundational in enabling that to happen,” the commander said. “AI and machine learning, all these technologies we’re starting to talk about ... that focus is on data management, data security, moving data. And that’s all what the service center is going to do or will be able to do for the modernization.”

And zero-trust cybersecurity goes hand in hand with data centricity and data security. The C5ISC team will be putting in the zero-trust foundation this year, which will provide an “integrated data environment,” help eliminate “siloed backend databases,” and allow big data processing. “We are working on the zero-trust architecture as one of our initiatives. We have over 350 systems that the C5I Service Center oversees. We will have to do zero trust for all of that. And we’re also providing the subject matter experts to the Coast Guard’s federated IT, the other partners who run some of the IT, and helping them understand the zero trust requirements to getting them on a path to goodness on meeting the zero trust timelines,” Capt. Carroll noted.

The center also is building a software factory called Herman. The name is inspired by Herman the cat, who was issued an official Coast Guard identification card and served as an “expert mouser” during World War II. The factory is intended to allow the service to be more agile in its software development. Under the Agile Compass contract, which is in the works, certified contractors will use the factory for rapid development. Also, the C5ISC is working with the Defense Innovation Unit for rapid prototyping.

Capt. Carroll is tweaking the organizational structure within the C5ISC in hopes of keeping up with advancing technologies. “We are changing some of our organizational structure to meet that emerging technology to be more efficient, which was the goal of the original creators of the service center. We are creating a cloud brokering branch, an organization that’s going to focus on cloud and the cloud brokering.”

The commander indicated that his team will be exploring content management and workflow orchestration capabilities, which might be more of a challenge than many people would realize when it must be implemented in a .mil environment with zero-trust requirements. “We’ve learned some hard lessons in the last year where something that people have done out in the commercial world quite easily did not merge real well to our enterprise and the .mil requirements.”

Along with its modernization efforts, the Coast Guard’s reputation as a technology laggard might need an update as well, Capt. Carroll suggested. “We used to joke that the Coast Guard’s technology was 20 years behind. We are really stepping up. Sometimes we’re ahead of Department of Defense or Department of Homeland Security,” he said.