The Navy is challenging its program directors to find ways of opening legacy systems to new capabilities, but the process of moving to modular, open systems architectures retroactively is a slow and difficult process, according to a senior service scientist.
The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) would be scrapped under a Department of Defense streamlining bill unveiled April 17 by Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.
Thornberry’s proposed “Comprehensive Pentagon Bureaucracy Reform and Reduction Act” would eliminate DISA by Jan. 1, 2021 and transfer its functions to U.S. Cyber Command and other agencies.
DISA, which has more than 8,000 military and civilian employees, is charged with providing command-and-control and information-sharing capabilities to joint warfighters, national leaders and coalition partners.
DISA reports to DoD’s chief information officer and is based at Fort Meade, Md., where Cyber Command is also headquartered.
The 21-page bill would also eliminate several other entities, including the Defense Technical Information Center, the Defense Technology Security Administration, the Test Resource Management Center and Washington Headquarters Services.
The bill calls for reviewing whether the Defense Contract Audit Agency and the Defense Contract Management Agency should be merged or have some of their functions transferred to other agencies.
The bill also would reduce the number of senior executive service-level CIOs in DoD from 60 to five.
Thornberry said that reducing DoD’s bureaucracy would help speed up decision-making at a time when threats are changing rapidly.
“These reforms will involve tough choices, but we owe it to the troops and taxpayers to rebuild a force that is more agile and more capable than the force we have today,” he said.
Thornberry described the bill as a discussion draft. He plans to include a final version in the fiscal year 2019 defense authorization bill.
DoD had no immediate comment on his proposal.