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A better plan for buying services

DoD develops board to oversee coordination with industry

Federal News Network Staff

October 6, 2008 7:07 am

3 min read

By Jason Miller
Executive Editor
FederalNewsRadio

The Defense Department has initiated an Enterprise Guidance Board to coordinate and govern how the services decide on what software applications are needed and how they will be paid for.

John Garing, the Defense Information Systems Agency, says the board is how DoD approaches their enterprise needs as a team.

“The board is a place where the supplier comes together with the customer,” says Garing after a speech at an event sponsored by IAC in Arlington, Va. Thursday. “I have to give Dave Wennergren a lot of credit for bringing this together.”

Wennergren, the Defense deputy CIO, leads the board in an effort to raise the level of communication between DoD and suppliers, Garing says.

Garing also is leading a broad effort in DISA to manage its supply chain similar to how a large company, such as Wal-Mart, would.

Part of this effort is to change the way DISA buys services.

“Our infrastructure needs to be able to handle 24/7 up time and that is a big change for us,” he says. “We still have applications that go down every third Sunday of the month for updating. We can’t do that in the future.”

DISA is leading the DoD effort toward cloud computing. This is the idea that users can access data and applications through the Internet instead of counting on one specific data center.

Garing says DoD must move to cloud computing, but it also presents several challenges.

“The horns of the dilemma is getting that kind of power inside the firewall,” Garing says. “Inside the firewall we are okay on security. It’s what do we use on the outside that becomes an issue. There are some applications that could work outside that we have traditionally kept inside the firewall.”

DISA is starting small with the concept of cloud computing through the Rapid Access Computing Environment (RACE) program.

Garing says this is a production and test environment for other services to bring applications in and see how they work with this type of technology.

DoD will rely on its Defense Information Systems Network for a lot of cloud computing in the future. Garing says DISA is in the middle of an update of the network so it can better provide online enterprisewide services.

The DISN is one of five areas DISA is focusing on, Garing says.

The other areas include computing, such as software-as-a-service; enterprise services; command and control on demand when forces deploy; and innovation and engineering to help develop next generation technologies.

Garing says on the horizon DISA is looking at enterprise e-mail, chat or texting, single sign-on capabilities and social networking behind the firewall.

“Our computing needs are elastic and they need to go up and down as needed,” he says. “We have to consider software-as-a-service because paying by the license or seat doesn’t work for us very well.”

Behind all of this, Garing says, is DISA’s move to consolidate data centers to 13 from 18.

“We are talking to one service about co-mingling their data centers with ours,” he says. “As long as they follow our rules, the service could use capacity on demand and host enterprise services.”

Garing would not say which service DISA is discussing this with.

All of this work is pointing in one direction, Garing says.

“If we don’t do cloud computing or platform computing, we will become irrelevant,” he says.

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On the Web:

Defense Information Systems Agency – RACE

FederalNewsRadio – DoD wants security assurances from vendors

FederalNewsRadio – Dishing with DISA