Katie Arrington, the acting chief information officer (CIO) at the Department of Defense (DoD), previewed a new program on Wednesday from the Pentagon’s tech shop called “Mission Network as a Service” that aims to enhance data interoperability across DoD components.
Arrington said the coming program aligns with other recent efforts from the DoD CIO Office such as the overhaul of the DoD’s Risk Management Framework (RMF) and the launch of the Software Fast Track (SWFT) program.
“You can’t be lethal and ready if you’re not efficient, right? So, let’s get the efficiency – moving the SWFT program, blowing up the RMF. The next thing you guys are going to hear out of my shop is something called Mission Network as a Service,” Arrington teased at a June 11 tech conference hosted by Adobe.
“I’m collapsing all the disparate networks,” Arrington continued. “It’s all getting collapsed into one. And where we really need to get good, [where we] really need to get industry’s input on, is data labeling, data tagging, and ICAM: identity credential access management.”
While Arrington didn’t share too many details on the Mission Network as a Service program, she did explain how collapsing all of the disparate networks into one will benefit the DoD.
Disparate networks refer to systems that operate independently and do not readily share data or interact with each other. According to Arrington, the Pentagon has a lot of them.
“I can’t go to any command I want to and put my CAC [Common Access Card] in and access data. Is that crazy?” Arrington said.
She pointed out that in the private sector, employees are able to access their data anywhere they want, from any of their company’s facilities. “How is it we are so far behind?” Arrington said, stressing, “We have to do better.”
“We have to standardize with the capability to customize at the edge. So, if I create a core, central fabric, my tenants can have their own disparate capability or technology that they want. But there must be interoperability,” the acting CIO said.
“The data that’s in the core tenant all has to be standard and labeled and tagged the same way. So, your identity, no matter where you are in the world, what you’re doing … you put your CAC card in and you’re able to extract the data that you are able to see by your identity credentials,” Arrington added. “That’s where we’re moving to right now because right now, it’s archaic at the Department of Defense.”