The DoDIIS Conference Agenda is now up at the conference site, and it really looks to be a great one. The confernece will be great for technology leaders in government, technology providers from industry, and the mission-focused executive leadership who seeks to guide both. If you want to shape the future, come to the DoDIIS conference and see what secure enterprises with advanced analytical missions are up to.

I’ve pasted the full agenda below, but some key highlights include:

• An overview by DIA’s CIO and Director of DS, Mr. Grant Schneider.
• Insights into secure collaboration provided by Mr. John “Mike” McConnell, former Director of National Intelligence and a mentor to legions of us who have long revered him.
• An overview of the mission needs put on the DIA technology team, provided by the Director of DIA Lieutenant General Ron Burgess.
• Insights into the human element of the system provided by noted professor and thinker Robert Axelrod.
• Deep dives into successes in innovation and information sharing, “CIA Style” presented by champion innovator Mr. Geoffrey Fowler, Director and Managing Editor of the World Intelligence Review (WIRe).
• Many breakout sessions are scheduled, including a wide range of mission-focused topics and advanced technology deep dives. I personally plan on hitting the ones on Hadoop (of course, since “Big Data” is an issue we should all be accelerating into our enterprise). I’ll also attend the “Data Center for the Future” talk since DoDIIS planners are always at the forefront of datacenter design and I’m sure I’ll pick up some good tips there.  I also noticed a breakout on the “Egyptian Revolution and Twitter” that might be insightful.

I hope to run into about 2000 of my friends at the event. I’ll also be blogging a bit from there, as will Ryan Kamauff and Chris Barnes.  And look for us on Twitter as well. We are at: @bobgourley, @Ryan_Kamauff, @ChrisBarnesCP

And, consider this a pre-announcement: we are putting the finishing touches on a site meant to pull together our evals of DoDIIS technology and twitter feeds/etc during the event. Find it at http://dodiistech.com

For more details and to register see: http://www.ncsi.com/dodiis11/index.html

Here is the DoDIIS agenda:

Sunday 1 May

Evening reception/strategy sessions/networking.

Monday 2 May

0750 – 0800

Announcements

0800 – 0830

Keynote Speaker

Mr. Grant M. Schneider Deputy Director for Information Management and Chief Information Officer, Defense Intelligence Agency

0830 – 0915

Secure Collaboration — Technology to Support the Mission

Mr. John “Mike” McConnell Executive Vice President, Booz Allen Hamilton

0915 – 1000

Networking Break/Technology Exposition

1000 – 1045

Keynote Speaker

Lieutenant General Ronald L. Burgess, Jr.Director, Defense Intelligence Agency

1100 – 1145

Vulnerabilities of Wetware Professor Robert Axelrod Walgreen Professor for the Study of Human Understanding, University of Michigan

1145 – 1300

Networking Break/Technology Exposition/Lunch

1300 – 1345

Breakouts / Learning Labs

1400 – 1445

Breakouts / Learning Labs

1445 – 1545

Networking Break/Technology Exposition

1545 – 1630

Breakouts / Learning Labs

Tuesday 3 May

0750 – 0800

Announcements

0800 – 0845

The Real Business Value of IT: How CIOs Create and Communicate Value

Mr. Richard Hunter Vice President Distinguished Analyst, Gartner

0845 – 0930

Disruptive Innovation in Computing, and Mission Impact in the Next Decade

Mr. David McQueeney Vice President of Software Research, IBM

0930 – 1030

Networking Break/Technology Exposition

1030 – 1115

Breakouts / Learning Labs

1130 – 1215

Breakouts / Learning Labs

1215 – 1330

Networking Break/Technology Exposition/Lunch

1330 – 1415

Potential for Two-Way Collaboration

Mr. Terry Kline Vice President and Chief Information Officer, General Motors

1415 – 1515

IC Executive Board: Integrating the Intelligence Mission through Technology

Moderator:
Mr. Al Tarasiuk Assistant Director of National Intelligence and Chief Information Officer, Intelligence Community

Panelists:
Mr. James Beagles Acting Director, Chief Information Officer, Department of Homeland Security

Mr. David DeVries Principal Director, Office of the Department of Defense Chief Information Officer, Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence

Mr. Dean E. Hall Associate Executive Assistant Director and Deputy Chief Information Officer, Federal Bureau of Investigation

Mr. Kelly A. Miller Deputy Chief Information Officer, National Security Agency/Central Security Service

Mr. Paul E. Muench Deputy Chief Information Officer, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency

Mr. Grant M. Schneider Deputy Director for Information Management and Chief Information Officer, Defense Intelligence Agency

Mr. Neill Tipton Director, Information Sharing and Partner Engagement, Department of Defense

Ms. Jill Tummler Singer Chief Information Officer, National Reconnaissance Office

Ms. Jeanne C. Tisinger Chief Information Officer, Central Intelligence Agency

1515 – 1615

Networking Break/Technology Exposition

1615 – 1700

Breakouts / Learning Labs

Wednesday 4 May

0750 – 0800

Announcements

0800 – 0845

Unifying Intelligence Strategies — The Central, Critical Node to Achieving Integrated Intelligence

Mr. Robert Cardillo Deputy Director for Intelligence Integration, Office of the Director of National Intelligence

0845 – 0930

Innovation in Information Sharing — CIA Style

Mr. Geoffrey K. Fowler

Director and Managing Editor, World Intelligence Review (WIRe), Central Intelligence Agency

0930 – 1030

Networking Break/Technology Exposition

1030 – 1130

Services Panel: Secure and Collaborative Intelligence to Support the Warfighter

Panel Moderator: Mr. James R. Martin Director, ISR Programs, Office of the Under Secretary of Defense (Intelligence)

Panel Members:

Mr. Robert “Bo” T. Martin Deputy Director, ISR Capabilities, U.S. Air Force

Mr. Gregory B. Palmertree Chief Technology Officer, Marine Corps Intelligence

Ms. Lynn Schnurr Senior Technical Advisor, Army Intelligence Chief Information Officer, Information Management, Deputy Chief of Staff, G2 Headquarters, Department of the Army

Mr. Jack Y. Gumtow Chief Information Officer, Office of Naval Intelligence

1130 – 1215

The Path to Secure and Agile Cloud Computing

Mr. Michael Capellas Chairman and CEO, VCE, The Virtual Computing Environment Company

1215 – 1315

Networking Break/Technology Exposition/Lunch

1315 – 1400

Breakouts / Learning Labs

1415 – 1500

Breakouts / Learning Labs

1500 – 1545

Networking Break/Technology Exposition

1545 – 1630

Breakouts / Learning Labs

Thursday 5 May

0750 – 0800

Announcements

0800 – 0845

NIST Cloud Computing Program: Useful Information for USG Cloud Adopters

Ms. Dawn Leaf Senior Advisor, National Institute of Standards and Technology Information Technology Laboratory and Senior Executive for Cloud Computing

0845 – 0930

Keynote Speaker

Mr. James Stout Senior Director, DoD Customer Executive, Avanade Federal Services

0930 – 0945

Networking Break

0945 – 1030

Intelligence Studies: What Academia Provides

Professor James Breckenridge Dean of the Walker School of Business and Chair of the Department of Intelligence Studies at Mercyhurst College

1030 – 1100

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I’ve previously written about some of the challenges of IT support in the national security space. Leaders have to balance competing mandates of mission support and security and have to do that in an environment constrained by resource limits and slowed by layers of oversight. One of the most challenging positions in the national security space is the CIO job at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. This position is complicated because it is mandated to drive change over organizations where budgets and missions are frequently under competing pressures. It takes really savvy professionals to make a positive difference in this environment.

One of my favorite IT leaders just departed after an incredibly successful stint there. Priscilla Gutherie held this appointed position during a time of incredible chaos and she brought sanity and created an environment of continuous improvement. Priscilla is a leader with class and an ability to hold knowledge of huge enterprise architectures in her head. I think that comes from her experiences as a program manager and VP at TRW and her system engineering experience, but part of it is just because she is smart. Many of us were concerned when her tour at ODNI was up since we need mission focused thinkers like her in positions like the ODNI CIO. Little did I know, but the person the President named to fill her shoes would be Al Tarasiuk, a person who’s career has demonstrated, again and again, an ability to focus IT on mission needs to get things done (I’ve previously written about Al here: http://ctovision.com/2008/08/cia-it-leaders-are-world-class-it-leaders ).

Thanks Priscilla, on behalf of all of us who know what you did.

And thanks to you Al, for accepting the challenge of a position few others could tackle. We all wish you the best of luck as you address this very dynamic/challenging position.

Below is the text from the ODNI press release:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE ODNI News Release No. 5-11
February 16, 2011

From: http://www.dni.gov/press_releases/20110216_release.pdf

PRESIDENT OBAMA TO APPOINT NEW CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER
OF THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY

President Barack Obama announced today his intention to appoint former CIA Chief Information Officer Al Tarasiuk as the chief information officer of the Intelligence Community.

“Al is well known for his leadership in information sharing and intelligence integration, and his experience, distinguished career and dedication to duty will greatly benefit the entire Intelligence Community,” said Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper.

Tarasiuk served as CIA’s CIO from 2005 to 2010, and was director of the CIA’s Information Service Center prior to that.

He holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the New Jersey Institute of Technology and a Master of Science from The George Washington University.

The CIO’s office is responsible for establishing common information technology standards across the Intelligence Community and for directing and managing all IT related procurement for the IC. The CIO is also tasked with developing IT architecture to support information sharing policies and objectives throughout the Intelligence Community.

==========================

Here is Al’s bio, from http://www.afceadc.org/events/bios-presentations/bio-al-tarasiuk/

Chief Information Officer
Central Intelligence Agency

Al Tarasiuk was appointed the Chief Information Officer of the Central Intelligence Agency on 1 October 2005.  His responsibilities span CIA’s global IT enterprise.  Before becoming CIO, Mr. Tarasiuk was the director of CIA’s Information Services Center.  In this role, he had responsibility for development, deployment and operational support of the CIA global information technology infrastructure.  Mr. Tarasiuk reports directly to the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency and is a member of the CIA Corporate Board.

Mr. Tarasiuk began his career in the federal government in 1986 as an electrical engineer developing and implementing RF systems.  He advanced quickly as a technical manager, program manager, and senior executive, serving in roles of increasing responsibilities and providing strong leadership, vision and delivering strategic IT solutions.

Mr. Tarasiuk holds an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering from the New Jersey Institute of Technology and a M.S. in Engineering Management from the George Washington University.

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This post will be cross-posted at Halfofthespear.com

With Denis Blair soon to depart as the Director of National Intelligence, the engine driving the speculation over who his replacement will be is in high gear. One of the more unusual names to surface: former President Bill Clinton. Two intelligence professionals and former colleagues – Bob Gourley and Mike Tanji – square off over the merits – or lack thereof – the former President would bring to the job of DNI.

Pro

The DNI is entrusted with responsibilities unlike any other governmental official. He must serve the creation of policy and the optimization of decisions across the government and do so while remaining free from undue influence.  He must be a leader who ensures balance between defeating complex threats while simultaneously protecting liberties. He is a titular boss but functionally a coordinator at the helm of a national apparatus that must deal with issues of global import. There is only one American who has operated at such a level and under such conditions: former President Bill Clinton.

Could we convince him to accept a position in a branch of government he once ran?  I have no doubt that if his nation decided he is the type of leader we needed to elevate intelligence community performance to new levels that he would accept. Why should we consider the former President for such a job? Just consider the strengths and expertise he brings to bear:

Experience: Few have held the position Article II of our Constitution describes as the center of our nation’s executive power, so few understand the decisions that intelligence drives like he would.

Customer knowledge: He has a deep understanding of customers throughout the executive branch and also the needs and capabilities of information providers in the private sector and mission partners in allied nations across the globe.

Smarts: It almost goes without saying that anyone who could ascend to the Office of the President must have a proven ability to take in large quantities of data and reason about its meaning.  President Clinton clearly exceeds this requirement.

Political Savvy: Since political oversight is part of our culture in the nation’s intelligence community this is a critically important component. Government at its core is based on people organizing to accomplish big things, and few have led and organized in ways that he has. Fewer still have the political connections and political savvy he does.

Charisma: There is something about a smart, experienced, mission focused leader that we all admire, but there is something even more substantial about Bill Clinton. He has an incredible ability to connect with individuals. Like many others, I have been in crowds and watched as he turned thoughts and moved people through this magical quality. We really need Bill’s charisma in the IC today.

Motivation: What does a former President live for?  For President Clinton the answer is clear: he remains focused on changing the world. There is a corner of the world that needs change badly and he is perhaps the only individual qualified to execute this change. The nation’s needs and his motivations are almost perfectly aligned.

Leading the IC as DNI is a high-stakes game that several have played but all have lost. The community is still sub-optimized and it is well past time to take it to an entirely new level of performance and effectiveness. Who else has the right mix of skills necessary to do that other than President Clinton?

Con

The idea that even a powerful personality such as Bill Clinton would make a good DNI is wishful thinking. Success in the DNI’s post has little to do with personality, or even political savvy (which the former President has in spades). Success as DNI can only come with a President who actually cares about reforming the IC, and I have not seen any indication that the current President is so inclined.

The DNI may have the title of head of the IC, but his role is just a few inches north of ceremonial. He does not have the ability to hire or fire the heads of the various intelligence agencies, something any true boss should have. He also has no effective control over the IC budget, which is where the real power lies in a bureaucracy (or bureaucracy of bureaucracies, if you will). As recent indicators have shown, the IC’s problems are so deep and systemic that absent such power no amount of personality or political savvy will fix them.

Bill Clinton may be adept and handling the personalities of the various agency heads, and be able to avoid political and parochial land mines, but let’s not forget the obvious disdain for intelligence he had during his tenure as President. Former DCI Woolsey jokes about how welcome he was in the Clinton White House:

“Remember the guy who in 1994 crashed his plane onto the White House lawn? That was me trying to get an appointment to see President Clinton.”

Clinton’s next choice to head the IC was John Deutch, who didn’t see any reason why he shouldn’t do “company” work on his personal laptop . . . which he connected to the Internet. I can’t think of any serious national power that would have a man who ignores his chief intelligence officer and then replaces him with an absent minded professor as the head of its intelligence apparatus.

Intelligence is a serious business, not a jobs program for “formers” and re-treads. The IC needs a DNI who understands its functions (or the functions of any sufficiently large information-based enterprise), can cast a vision of the future, can craft policies that will help realize the vision, and a President who will back his plays as he implements policy (including cutting off heads and fighting Congress). Bill Clinton is certainly smart enough to address the issues, but he had his shot. What indication do we have that he’s changed his stance on intelligence in any substantive fashion? What makes anyone think that a career politician of any stripe is interested in bringing about serious change and not simply doing whatever it takes to keep their jobs?

The IC needs a turnaround artist who measures success by how unneeded he is when he’s finished. The IC needs Lincoln or Marshall (both of whom had no qualms about giving the boot to subordinates who couldn’t deliver and elevating talented unknowns). I don’t know who that is today, but I know it’s not Bill Clinton.

The Last Word

Debating Bill Clinton as the next DNI is more than just a thought experiment. There are compelling arguments both for and against, but the overarching point we are trying to drive home is that any serious candidates on the short list for nomination are going to need both a depth and breadth of skills and experiences in order to succeed. There are many potential candidates that are strong in key areas, such as intelligence issues, management and politics, but no one set of skills is going to be sufficient. Likewise, being able to tackle the functions of leadership absent a sufficiently far-reaching vision of what our IC could be is just as futile an effort.  The only thing that is guaranteed is that we will get a new DNI, the question is: will it be the DNI we need?

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The 2010 DoDIIS Worldwide Conference will be held 23-27 May in Phoenix Arizona.  This venue is hosted by the Defense Intelligence Agency’s Directorate for Information Management and Chief Information Officer.  The focus is on topics relevant to mission success for the Department of Defense Intelligence Information Systems (DoDIIS).  DoDIIS is all about facilitating the collection, analysis and presentation of intelligence to tactical users and policy makers in a secure and timely manner.

This year’s agenda is particularly impressive.  The agenda (which is pasted below as a reference) includes world class industry speakers like Joseph Tucci, CEO of EMC, and Dr. Steven Armentrout, CEO of Parabon.  Government speakers include the leaders of DoD intelligence IT like Grant Schneider, Roy Apseloff, and Casey Henson.  The national intelligence IT team will also be present in force, including a panel chaired by ODNI CIO Priscilla Guthrie.

The event will also hold an expo floor with 100′s of advanced technologies and mission-focused solutions being demonstrated.  It is my intent to spend time with 100% of the companies that have decided to participate in the expo, this is a great way to take the pulse of technology that is ready for insertion into large enterprises and a great way to generate topics for future blog posts and for evaluation at CTOlabs.com

Agenda:

24 May 2010

25 May 2010:

26 May 2010:

27 May 2010:

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Carahsoft is a unique, trusted firm that helps government find and rapidly acquire the right technologies and helps high tech firms successfully interact with government (which has famously onerous processes for businesses that want to serve the federal mission).  Carahsoft is a client of my firm and one of the things I’m particularly proud about is their sponsorship of venues where government and industry tech leaders can interact together.  One venue of note is a series they coordinate called the Intelligence Community Executive Forum.

This periodic event focuses on executives from the IC and the industry companies around the IC.  Today’s session of the ICEF focused on industry and commercial technologies addressing the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative.

It is hard to capture the content of a venue like this.  Its true value comes from the dynamic interactions and high data rate conversations that take place throughout.  But I thought I should try to provide some gist of what happened so you can determine whether or not you should participate in future venues like this. Give the agenda below a quick glance then I’ll add some additional context:

Agenda:

During breaks several sponsors were providing demos and additional information on their technology including:

A quick gist:

Don Boian of Cyber Command provided great context and a good kickoff to dialog.  Then throughout the event, cyber thought leaders in and out of government discussed the state of current technologies and current mission needs in cyber-focused organizations.  Some of these mission needs are truly enduring.  For example, the need for defense in depth as a strategy and approach vice just point solutions.  But today, defense in depth is not enough.  Adversaries always find a way in and defenders must continuously monitor and prepare for remedial action.  With the incredibly high volumes of data and information around those intrusions new means must be found to gain insights into what is occurring and then determine the appropriate action to take.  This must be done so fast new operational constructs around “dynamic defense” are required.  Defenders require capabilities that can increase the speed of good guy decision-making.  There must be speed in vulnerability detection, speed in intrusion detection, speed in decision-making and speed in execution.  Cyber Command defenders use the phrase “operate at network speeds.”

Another common theme throughout the event was a call for enhanced situational awareness in the cyber domain. The bad news is that call has been made for decades now.  There has been movement in enhancing situational awareness, but nothing yet fills the need.  More work is required.

Another theme was the need to enable humans to interact with data in far better, far faster ways.  Cyber data needs to be rapidly run through automated tools that can enable not just search but discovery using tools like Endeca.

Collaboration for cyber related commands and organization is another area where many enhancements have been made lately.  In a very good trend, it seems most organizations working cyber defense/cyber operations now know of each other and have frequent interactions.  There is more need for enhanced human to human collaboration and even enterprise grade social networking/social media around cyber defense as an aide to bringing the right understanding to situations.  A capability to watch here is Jive.

It is not only network defenders that need collaborative capabilities.  Developers of software and those that lead/manage/interact with them, including users, need ways to collaborate.  The ICEF was treated to an overview of a very positive capability to do that, the DISA led Forge.mil .  In my opinion, the positive disruptions from this activity have just begun, far more goodness will come from this project as more and more developers make use of it.  It is speeding development of new capabilities and is also laying the foundation of what may be the biggest positive improvement in the security and testing environment in years.

The security aspects of Cloud Computing were discussed in detail.  A general statement: If security is engineered into cloud computing capabilities, cloud concepts can significantly enhance the security of enterprises.  However, the reverse is also true.  If security is neglected in cloud constructs it can doom us all!

The ICEF was treated to an interaction with Tony Sager, one of the nation’s greatest thinkers in cyber security. Tony’s ability to express technological concepts in ways we can all understand is always appreciated.  A key conclusion from Tony: we are entering a phase in cyber defense that will require enhanced information management.   Note:  Tony provided us all with context on some very important concepts that all network defenders should be tracking, SCAP, NDV and FDCC.   My personal sense from the interaction was that most in the venue who work closely with security technology new of these constructs, however, it is getting to the point where all IT professionals and all leaders in an out of government need to know these capabilities, even if you are not a security professional.  So, a recommendation:  accept it as your civic duty to study up on SCAP, NVD and FDCC.

Other speakers, including Dr. Ted Kirscher, Chief Architect of the NSA Threat Operations Center, underscored again the need for new means to conduct highspeed assessment of the right data from defensive devices.  Ted, like everyone else who spoke, also ensured we all knew the collaborative nature of the work in front of us all.

For the many people I heard from this was a day well spent, a time to reflect on progress and to think through the next priorities to address.  There are some huge challenges that confront cyber defenders, but with new organizational constructs and new focus being placed on the mission these challenges are certainly achievable.  Some might still look impossible, but hey, like Walt Disney said, “It’s kind of fun to do the impossible.”

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The World Intelligence Review (WIRe) held its 2010 Conference Feb 24-25 (see: https://thewireconference.com ).  I was allowed to provide some thoughts to the folks gathered there and used the briefing below to help generate some discussion.

I hope the briefing made the key point that users are responsible for articulating requirements and for ensuring their chain of command understands what they need in order to accomplish their mission.

I know it is not as simple as I made it out to be in the brief.  But still I think it is important to underscore that in a mission-focused organization it is very important for users to be vocal about their needs.

http://docs.google.com/present/view?id=ddjnt9hd_326f5f337d6

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This is the concluding post on enhancing IT innovation in support of the Counter Terror effort.  The first part focused on the challenge and importance context relevant to design criteria.  This post focuses on design criteria and proposes next steps.

Transforming the Challenge Into Design Criteria:

The legacy IT environment of the counter-terror community is complex.  Changes to the environment must be done by design or they may cause unintended consequences that result in more harm to the system than good. To enable good design, the challenges previously articulated can be captured in explicit goals that the counter-terror IT enterprise must achieve.   Primary Design Criteria are those that must be met in a successful design.  Secondary Design Criteria are those that are highly desirable but not absolutely essential.

Primary Design Criteria.  The counter-terror IT enterprise will possess the following features:

• Data streams are the feeds of data normally moving across IP-based networks from sensors, databases, command centers and other generators of message traffic and events.
  • Data stream design features supporting humans include the need to provide access to and insight into data streams in a way conducive to immediate understanding of importance.  Alerts on what is occurring in data streams should be provided.  Visualizations of data streams should be provided.  Since humans are the only component of the system which can assess relevance they must be able to inject their assessments of relevance into the data stream. Therefore, analysts/watchstanders/other approved users will be given an ability to rapidly tag information in stream as desired. Data streams must be designed to support humans with many other analytical capabilities including an ability to understand how the enterprise is functioning (data ingest rates, networks/nodes available, bottlenecks, what is nominal performance etc).
  • Data stream design features supporting computer to computer processing will include design of systems to evaluate data streams to produce alerts to users and to evaluate new data in the context of all legacy data (through pattern matching, correlation and database search).  This evaluation step may generate additional alerts.
  • A key note: the counter-terror mission requires data stream’s from from a wide community including communities operating at many different classification levels.  The engineering of solutions that bring these streams together seems to be a very straightforward task but the very high data rates and need for security make this a challenge. There are ways to use software to create cross domain data repositories and that may be the way ahead here. And an enduring challenge is in finding rapid ways to bring on new streams of data from other organizations.  This also requires focused engineering.

• Databases are holders of and operators on data.
  • Database design features supporting humans include the need to provide enhanced means of accessing, discovering and working with data at rest. People need systems that automatically discover relationships in the data.  Users must also be given ways to assess the relevance of data at rest and then inject assessments of their judgment (users get to give the “so what” of the information).  Humans must be enabled with guided navigation and discovery engines, especially discovery engines that will enable discovery of all variations/spellings of names and locations.
  • Database design features focused on automation include design of a means to evaluate every update to a database in context of previous information in the enterprise. Every update to a database must be evaluated by automated routines to understand how the update related to existing information stores from throughout the enterprise.  When data is found that relates to other data, users must be notified so evaluations can be made on its relevance.  When databases are queried and when discovery engines are run against databases misspellings must not be an issue (modern discovery capabilities return all related results including all potential misspellings).  Multi-lingual search/correlation and other language support tools and information extraction capabilities are also required.

The primary design criteria are summarized in the following matrix:

Secondary Design Criteria.  If at all possible, the counter-terror IT enterprise will possess the following additional features:

• Designs in this environment should accommodate change.  Open standards and open architecture are a must. Collaborative development environments which enable secure code development and application development lifecycle management are also a must.
• The mission here places a very high premium on IT security and the protection of privacy.  The legacy architecture and objective design will both continue to emphasize protection of data and privacy.  Additionally, the objective design will work with an existing network and ride on top of existing infrastructure.  This means the objective design will accommodate multiple domains of classification and security policy.
• A key shortfall in our capabilities (human and machie) is name spellings, however, we don’t do well in challenging people to validate their name entries.  There is a need for a “do you mean…?” feature when people are enterirng data.  Auto-fills driven by data from hundeeds of indexes and databases could help drive this feature.
• Production of intelligence in living/fluid/dynamic ways is in need of focused attention.  Little engineering needs to be done to accomplish this, but upgrading IT can at times be a good excuse to get the attention of business process owners and can help in improving business processes (we have all seen what IT can do to a bad process, it can automate the bad process and make it far worse).
• The most significant situations confronting members of the intelligence community are those that require our best thinkers to collaborate together across many systems.  The need to enhance collaboration is a continuing, enduring requirement that should be a consideration in all designs.

Concluding Thoughts:

Redesign and modernization of current systems and the enterprise IT environment supporting counter terror work is a complex task involving far more than just the intelligence community.  It involves a large community of IC providers, IC users, law enforcement, homeland security and IT professionals.  Throughout the redesign of IT for this large community we should ensure computers support humans in ways where humans do what humans do best and computers do what computers do best.

Next Steps:

A useful next step will be to closely examine the entire framework of counter terror systems with the framework above.  This review can inform strategic decisions regarding future design work.

The framework above can also be used in developing requirements and in evaluating commercial technologies which can be relevant to meeting mission needs.  New design criteria do not always need to result in totally new systems.  Frequently existing systems can be improved by configuration changes and CONOP improvements and the design criteria above can aid in discussing those.

A closing note:  This paper addresses a framework for considering key design criteria.  It is the opinion of the author that governance must be addressed in conjunction with systems design.  Technology can help mitigate threats to the nation, but only if the right decisions are made regarding how data flows and that generally requires clear, non-ambiguous community-wide governance structures.

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I’ve just received word that Dawn Meyerriecks, one of the great’s of American technology, has just returned to federal service. Dawn has delivered real capability into some of the nation’s largest, most complex enterprises. And she has built communities of technologist as she did that, giving many of us someone to look up to and attempt to model themselves after.

I feel really good about the choice of Dawn for this incredibly demanding position.  The intelligence community needs her at a time like this.

For more, see the DNI press release, which I’ll post below:

Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair announced today that he has selected Dawn Meyerriecks, an expert in technology and operations management, to be the new Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Acquisition and Technology.

Meyerriecks has extensive experience in designing, building and fielding intelligence and information technology solutions for the government and private industry.  She was formerly the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) chief technology officer and the senior vice president for AOL Product Technologies.

“Dawn is well respected for her work in designing, acquiring and delivering effective intelligence and information systems for the Department of Defense, and for providing some of the best commercial products for the public and private sector,” Blair said.  “Her understanding of the entire end-to-end process of acquisition will help us deliver state of the art technology efficiently and when it is needed to maintain our advantage over our adversaries.”

The DDNI for A&T is the DNI’s senior acquisition executive and science and technology advisor responsible for integrating science and technology across the IC enterprise, and for ensuring excellence in achieving cost, schedule and performance in acquisition.  The office also is responsible for generating and developing research and development advances capable of transforming U.S. intelligence, and providing intelligence advantage over future adversaries.

“Dawn will help us keep pace with the leading edge of technology which is critical to the IC’s ability to deliver better intelligence,” Blair added.

The recently published 2009 National Intelligence Strategy places emphasis on science and technology and research and development by leveraging the explosive pace of technological innovation to improve the IC’s productivity, effectiveness and agility for the entire community.

Since 2006, Meyerriecks has worked as an independent consultant for government and commercial clients. Previously, she was the senior vice president for AOL Product Technologies where she was responsible for full lifecycle development and integration of all consumer-facing AOL products and services, including the relaunch of aol.com, AOL Instant Messenger, and the open client platform.

Prior to AOL, Meyerriecks worked for seven years beginning in 1998 at DISA where she was the CTO and technical director for the Joint Interoperability and Engineering (JIEO) Organization.  Her last assignment was to charter and lead a new Global Information Grid Enterprise Services (GIG) organization.  Meyerriecks worked at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory from 1983 to 1998 as a senior engineer and product manager before her tenure at DISA.

Meyerriecks holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Electrical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University with a double major in business and management science, and a Master of Science in Computer Science from Loyola Marymount University.

She co-chaired a soon-to-be-released acquisition reform study for the National Academy of Sciences, and has served on advisory boards to the National Counterterrorism Center, Sun Federal, Cranite Systems, and the Defense Science Board Summer Studies.

Meyerriecks holds numerous honors and awards for her government service work and for work in private industry including the Government Computer News, Department of Defense Person of the Year for 2004; InfoWorld, 2002 and 2001 CTO of the Year; CIO Magazine, 2002 20/20 Vision Award; Business Week 2.0, 20 Young Execs You Need to Know, 2001; Federal Computer Week, 2000 Top 100 of the year for the government sector; the Presidential Distinguished Service Award, November 2001; the Senior Executive Service Exceptional Achievement Award in 1998, 1999, 2000, 2002 and 2003; and the National Performance Review in August 1996. In November 2001, she was featured in Fortune magazine as one of the top 100 intellectual leaders in the world.

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The next big Gov2.0 event is the 21-22 July 2009 Open Government & Innovations Conference (OGI).  The list of speakers includes some of the greats from the federal IT scene, including:

• Vivek Kundra, Federal CIO
• Aneesh Chopra, Federal CTO
• Tim O’Reilly, Visionary of the Web2.0 movement
• David Weinberger, Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Harvard Law School
• David Wennergren, ASD NII and DoD CIO
• Michael Wertheimer, CTO, ODNI
• Lovisa Williams, Senior Technology Advisor, State Department
• Robert Carey, CIO, USN
• Colleen Coggins, Architect, Department of Interior
• Sean Dennehy, Intellipedia and Enteprise 2.0 Evangelist, CIA
• Mary Davie, Assistant Commissioner, GSA
• Debra Fillippi, Information Sharing Executive, DoD
• Jack Holt, Strategist for Emerging Media, DoD
• Jeffrey Levy, Director of Web Communications, EPA,
• Col Robert Morris, US Army

Topic, besides some incredible keynotes, include Web2.0 and National Security, Cross Agency Collaboration, Health IT, Openess and Information Sharing, Citizen Engagement, Transparency, Data Visualization and many others.

I’ll be speaking on a panel at 10:15 on the 21st on the topic of Web2.0 and National Security.  Panelists include Mark Drapeau, a published expert on the topic, Lin Wells, one of the most influential people in the national security space, and Lewis Shepherd of Microsoft’s Institute for Advanced Technology in Government.  I enjoy learning from all these guys and think they will make a good panel.  I’m wondering how they will respond to a new thesis I’m working on: the observation that just because you give Web2.0 tools to people it doesn’t mean they will use them.  We learned a similar lessons with information sharing.  Just because you connect everyone and give them interoperable tools does not mean they will collaborate.  They have to want to collaborate. If that thesis is correct, then giving everyone in the national security community access to web2.0 tools inside their firewall or not, will not mean the culture will change.  Those that want to collaborate and share will make great use of those tools.  Those that don’t want collaborate and share will not.  This means web2.0 will not make a difference for national security till we work some big cultural issues in the community (maybe that is just a blinding flash of the obvious.  Maybe that is a point of this conference).

Please check out the conference at opengovinnovations.com

Cheers,
Bob

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I previously mentioned the DoDIIS Worldwide Conference, which was held 17-21 May 2009.  I took lots of notes from the conference: enough, in fact, to fuel this blog for a long long time.  My associate Ryan Kamauff took even more (and more relevant) notes on the sessions there, and both of us kicked the tires on as many technology demos as we could.  This was a great education for us and the many other atendees there. I was also allowed to give a presentation at the conference (see: Five Megatrends in Enterprise IT).  Overall it was really a great time.

The following is a run down of some of the more salient parts of the conference.

Presentations were given by:

* Grant Schneider, DoDIIS CIO
* LTG Ron Burgess, DIA Director
* Ms. Sherrill Nicely, ODNI CIO
* Dr. Prescott Winter, ODNI ADDNI for Information Integration
* MG John Custer, CG, USA Intelligence Center
* Ms. Lauren States, IBM Cloud Computing director
* Mr. Mark Bregman, Symantec CTO
* Mr. Marlin Forbes, Verizon Federal
* RADM Tom Atkin, US Coast Guard
* Mr. Kurt Rao, CIO, Time Warner
* Mr. Bill Vass, COO Sun Federal
* Panels including all intelligence community CIOs and several senior customers were also held.

Our views of the most relevant/actionable information:

LTG Burgess very clearly demonstrated his strong support for and high expectations for the IT components of the enterprise, but he also laid down some requirements for the current team to achieve. He expects the mission to be served with highly reliable IT. And he expects that will be done in a way that does not give DIA customers “headaches.” DIA and the IT it provides is supposed to speed up mission success not slow it down (when customers touch DIA networks it should be “Like race time at Talladega”). He expects DoDIIS to deliver timely intelligence (“Intelligence without communications is nothing more than history”). He also expects DoDIIS to be in a mission support role. DoDIIS is to enable and support the mission. He reminded us all that he does not know the future but for planning purposes he believes FY11-15 will be an age of flat lines in the budget. “Not everyone will get what they want, but the mission will get what it needs– deployed in an enterprise style.”

Grant Schneider hit three themes hard: creating a change environment, moving DoDIIS forward to meet this change, and decreasing time to market for DoDIIS IT. Grant wishes to have an environment in DoDIIS that welcomes a change from the current policies. He also mentioned the movement towards “Green IT”. He underscored several other important capabilities, including the need for cross domain solutions and the need for collaborative tools. He established three focus areas for 2009: customer service excellence, enhanced requirements planning/management processes, and decreased time to market.  Upon closing of the conference Grant returned to many of these same themes, and also underscored that social networking is going to be driving much of the communication in the enterprise.

MG Custer provided one of the most exciting presentations of the conference. It was a very technology focused presentation that hit on the complex dynamic between the acceleration of technology and the need for customers to drive requirements. He is a clear believer that innovation on the edge should drive the systems we use, the architectures we employ and the methodologies we utilize on the battlefield. MG Custer provided thoughts on how DIA DS could better serve, and he did so in a way that made many of us think he was not getting responses to his needs in formal channels. Areas he said could use more DIA attention include:

• Designate GISA as Army JWICS regional support center (RSC)
• Develop cross-fertilization exchange program between GISA and RSCs
• Develop personnel exchange between G2 and DS
• Eliminate agendas and ‘not invented here’ syndrome
• MOA to establish battle hand-off between G2 and DIA

General Custer also showed the audience a YouTube video I reported on at this site (see:  http://ctovision.com/2009/03/you-really-have-to-see-this-from-mit-media-lab ).

Many speakers hit on common themes of the need for enhanced data sharing, the need for smarter data center strategies, the need for continual work in cross domain solutions (and smarter networks), the need for rapid implementation of ICD501, and the need to be able to share the results of programs and projects from elsewhere in the community. Speakers hit on the fact that A-Space is a positive thing but still pretty much limited to a small number of beltway analysts (J-space is coming and should be more broadly applied). Other speakers hit on the need to improve the acquisition processes.

The need for continual work in cross-domain solutions is particularly noteworthy. Progress has been made in many fronts regarding cross domain, and the government has done smart things like establish cross-domain management offices to help bring focus to this area. However, in some ways the establishment of cross-domain management offices and the regulations that come with it have actually introduced challenges regarding innovation. The government has focused so hard on reducing cross-domain solutions and narrowing the set of capabilities that new capabilities are very hard to introduce.

Technology themes during the conference mirror the technology themes elsewhere in the IT world: Virtualization, Storage, Cloud Computing, Open Source and Security were all key topics.

This conference informed our thoughts on high interested technology and was a fantastic opportunity to connect with old friends.  Thanks DoDIIS friends for letting me attend.

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