By Geoff Fein
The Department of Defense (DoD) is undertaking a number of efforts to overcome the challenegs of interoperability in information systems using a variety of commercially available technologies, a DoD official said.
Additionally, the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) is examining how to improve interoperability with coalition partners as well as government and non government agencies, David Mihelcic, chief technology officer at DISA, told Defense Daily in a recent interview.
Interoperability and coalition interoperability isn’t a single problem, he said.
“Some of the problems are technical…the systems are incompatible. Some are standards-based that even though they are [potentially compatible] they just haven’t been configured the right way,” Mihelcic said. “Some of those interoperability issues have to do with security…[the] classifications of our networks don’t match the classifications of coalition networks. DISA has programs that attack those on all fronts.”
DISA manages a program called Multi National Information Sharing (MNIS), which funds multiple existing coalition networks that are on the ground today in southwest Asia and in South Korea.
“[There] are multiple global coalition networks today that handle different coalitions, and DISA manages those different coalition networks through MNIS,” Mihelcic said. “We are trying to combine some of those coalition networks to reduce costs and achieve better interoperability, [across] coalitions as well.”
DISA is the manger of standards for the DoD and has strong outreach with its NATO, as well as other five I’s (Iraqization, improvement of intelligence, development of infrastructure, internationalization, and information operations) partners to ensure that they participate in that standards management process, where DISA selects standards that are not only compatible and usable by DoD systems, but by allies’ systems, Mihelcic said.
Those standards are embodied in the DoD IT (Information Technology) Standards Registry (DISR), Mihelcic added.
Besides the programmatic side and the standards and technical side, security is also a challenge, he noted.
“Right now we set up purpose built coalition networks–we will build a network that we will use with a particular coalition like Multi-National Forces Iraq. That’s a dedicated network, but it is different than the NIPERNET and SIPERNET,” he said. “What we are trying to do is come up with innovative technologies. [The] NSA (National Security Agency) is trying to develop better technologies to do information sharing across network boundaries, using Attribute Based Access Control (ABAC) based on a user need to determine whether or not they should have access to a piece of information, and even [across] a coalition boundary with that access control.”
Interoperability is also more that just making sure systems warfighters use can communicate with each other. Mihelcic pointed out that the challenge of interoperability also affects how DoD works with other government agencies, whether they be U.S. or foreign governments, as well as non-governmental organizations (NGO), he added.
One of those efforts is a Joint Concept Technology Demonstration (JCTD) called Transnational Information Sharing Cooperation (TISC).
JCTDs are similar to the Advanced Concept Technology Demonstrations (ACTD). JCTDs shorten the time cycle of developments. Where ACTDs would typically be about five years, JCTDs are basically two years in development evaluation and test, and one year to transition to operation (Defense Daily, Dec. 12).
“We are trying to take a different approach to information sharing. Instead of trying to tie our networks together with our coalition partners or build a brand new network and get everybody to move to that network, [we are using] open source software to quickly build portals that can quickly be federated together to do this kind of information sharing with NGOs and so forth,” Mihelcic said.
“It’s leveraging open source software. It’s based on open source content management systems called Drupal, and part of our notion is not only will we then use this for our sharing with coalition partners at the unclassified level, potentially even over the Internet, but then it will be available in open source software repositories like SourceForge and others will be able to download it and be able it instantiate their own communities of interest and share for the common good,” Mihelcic added.
SourceForge is a website that open source developers use to put projects in place to build software, to do configuration management of the build, to hand out assignments to a network of developers that are decentralized world wide and manage the pieces of the build as they come back, track artifacts like test results, bug tracking, request for changes, and documentation (Defense Daily, Dec. 12).
The fundamental difference between TISC and previous developments is that instead of saying DISA is going to build a DoD system and everybody has to come to it, DISA is working cooperatively to put this software out in the open source. “[That way] various folks, other nations, and NGOs will be able to stand up their own service across the Internet that will federate with our networks,” Mihelcic said.