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DISA: Social Media is the Wave of the Future

Email is yesterday’s medium, says the information agency’s director.

The defense community must move away from email and fully into social media, says the director of the Defense Information System Agency (DISA). Lt. Gen. Ronnie D. Hawkins Jr., USAF, told the audience at AFCEA’s Joint Information Environment Mission Partner Symposium in Baltimore that the defense community must break with the past in digital information technology.

“The wave of the future is in collaboration and social networking, and we have to get there,” Gen. Hawkins declared. “The people who are coming into DOD [the Defense Department] don’t do email. We have to get off of it.”

Gen. Hawkins asked for industry’s help in moving more forcefully into the digital future. “Help us change the rules that are out there now. You know as I do that some of them are archaic,” he said of the current information technology rules.

This includes acquisition. Saying that DISA “must make sure we are not using policies from the McNamara era,” Gen. Hawkins warned that 50-year-old policies must be changed to reflect ongoing changes in information technologies.