Spending on conferences is among first casualties as various defense components make cutbacks. DoD's online meeting service is suffering from its own popularity.
The department is creating and trying out a universal curriculum for five foundational cyber roles in 2013. DISA is leading the effort and will add new roles next year as it refines the training. The agency says it is doing all it can to synchronize its training not just across DoD, but across the entire federal government in line with the National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education (NICE).
The Network Services 2020 initiative will not be a large worldwide contract as the Networx and FTS procurements were over the past 20 years. GSA still is developing the overall strategy, but plans to use a similar approach it used with DISA on the recent satellite communications contract.
The mobile revolution isn't new to many agencies. Laptops and BlackBerrys have been standard issue for many government executives for the last decade. What is different, however, is the widespread use of smartphones and tablet computers. Both agencies and citizens hold new and more immediate expectations because of these devices, and the government must adapt to this technololgy. In our special report, Gov 3.0: It's Mobile, Federal News Radio explores how some agencies are meeting the demand internally and externally for mobile devices and apps. The challenge, like any new technology, is ensuring these devices actually help meet mission goals and don't become just another shiny toy.
DISA wants a secure mobile device manager and app store to support at least 162,000 Apple and Android mobile devices. Contract would begin next spring.
The Defense Information Systems Agency sees itself as a safety valve for increasing pressure on military services' IT budgets. At a meeting of CIOs last week, DISA told the military services they could offload commodity IT services to their data centers.
Agencies and universities are refining job descriptions, revamping training and education programs and helping industry, academia and government to begin to reach consensus on the makeup of a modern-day cybersecurity workforce. The Office of Personnel Management also has made changes to personnel systems so that job descriptions map to the framework. The plan already has had in impact on cyber education at colleges and universities across the country.
A massive contract awarded to Lockheed Martin in June to manage the Defense Information Systems Agency's Global Information Grid remains in place after the Government Accountability Office denied a bid protest from fellow contractor SAIC. Despite SAIC's allegations, GAO found DISA had reasonably evaluated Lockheed's proposal as well as claims of an organization conflict of interest.
Frank Kendall, undersecretary of defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, discusses which elements of the Better Buying Power Initiative have been successful. Plus, Henry Sienkiewicz, vice chief information assurance executive at the Defense Information Systems Agency and Roger Greenwell, DISA's director for field security operations join us to talk about the agency's plan to build on its track record of information assurance training and develop modular, DoD-wide training for specific cyber roles across the military services.
Military's cyber leaders say job satisfaction has so far trumped salary concerns when it comes to building and retaining a workforce of elite cyber warriors. Building the capacity of that training pipeline is the next challenge.
At meetings this week, DoD gives European Command the go-ahead to start building the first increment of a standards-based IT environment that will collapse thousands of networks into a single, interoperable environment.
The Defense Information Systems Agency has released its technical strategy for providing warfighter services. The plan is called the Global Information Grid Convergence Master Plan, and it rolls together emerging technologies and operational requirements to create a plan for all technical services.
DISA laid out its vision in a new five-year strategy. It said it will work with the U.S. Cyber Command to build up the Pentagon's cyber defenses.
This week the Army exceeded 500,000 users on its enterprise email network. The migration of potentially 3.7 million users to the network should be completed by March 2013. The Defense Department's move to a single, cloud-based system run by the Defense Information Systems Agency sets the stage for other enterprise-wide systems, said John Hale, DISA's chief of enterprise applications, in an interview with Federal News Radio's Jared Serbu and Jason Miller.
On the In Depth show blog, you can listen to the interviews, find more information about the guests on the show each day and links to additional resources.