[infowar.de] Homeland Security CIO wants 'network of networks'

[Ralf Bendrath <bendrath -! - zedat - fu-berlin - de>]

Infowar.de, http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~bendrath/liste.html
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Das klingt ja stark nach dem "System of Systems", das das Pentagon seit
Jahren aufbaut. Was der Text leider nicht erwähnt, ist das Information
Awareness Office von John Poindexter im Pentagon, an das ja offenbar
noch viel mehr Systeme angeschlossen werden sollen.
RB

http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/02/11/06/021106hncooper.xml

Homeland Security CIO wants 'network of networks'

By Loretta W. Prencipe 
November 6, 2002 

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Calling for help from the private sector, Steve
Cooper, special assistant to the President and CIO in the White
Houses' Office of Homeland Security, called for a "network of
networks" of federal, state, and local governments and certain private
sector industries to be developed as a national enterprise
architecture (NEA).

"What if we take existing networks at all levels of government and the
private sector as appropriate and integrate them? The challenges are
true standards and interoperability. We can solve those problems,"
Cooper said at the Federal CTO Forum 2002 here.

The day after the Republicans captured a mid-term majority in the
House and Congress, Cooper stated that he is confident a Department of
Homeland Security bill will be passed and that a national enterprise
architecture could be a reality in two to three years.

"The priorities that we have set are focused on the information
sharing and systems arena. ... We need to get the right information to
the right people all the time. This is what we're about in Homeland
Security," he said.

Citing the info sharing and systems integration models among various
federal and local law enforcement bodies, Cooper called for the help
of state and local governments and those companies that comprise the
critical infrastructure, including utilities and transportation
companies.

Cooper stated that state governments would have primary responsibility
for intrastate; feds would handle interstate and backbone issues.

But the question of sharing information among the federal government
and private-sector companies continues to be a problem. "We have to
get Congress on board and the private sector on board on how to
connect to critical infrastructure," Cooper said.

Emphasizing that the NEA is separate from the Defense Department (DoD)
and from the Federal Enterprise Architecture championed by Norman
Lorentz, CTO for the Office of Management and Budget, Cooper did say
that the NEA "dovetails with FEA. The Homeland Security mission is
part of the federal enterprise, but there are parts that are not. We
also have had positive discussions with DoD to make sure that we're
not building three stovepipe architectures."

Confident that a bill establishing the Homeland Security Department
will soon be passed, Cooper has already started addressing transition
technology issues.

"There are day one priorities," he said. "First is to ensure that we
have e-mail capabilities across the department from day one. You want
to create a brand and identity for the new entity. You use technology
for this."

Saying that establishing a "brand" is important to the identity of the
Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Cooper is considering setting
up a LDAP directory across the agencies that would comprise the DHS to
decode and translate e-mail addresses and get e-mail inside DHS.

"When send out [e-mail, it] will be @DHS. Eventually we would
migrate," he said.

Other transition priorities include setting up internal and external
portal capabilities and conducting an inventory of the various
organizations' IT portfolios, Cooper said. "A lot of the IT portfolios
sit in the program areas. That's [a question of] turf, budget. Isn't
Washington [supposed to be] a zero-sum game?"

But Cooper is confident that such politics can be overcome.

"What if the right parties that have a vested interest all sat down
and agreed on some shared objectives? And agreed upon a fair amount of
work and how to divvy it up? Rather than everyone trying to do similar
[functions] with the best of intentions and often inadvertently."

Despite not having any procurement capabilities, Cooper has had
successful discussions with the DoD and intelligence agencies on new
sharing of watch list information.

"We have tackled the process and the ownership issues of these lists.
We haven't built an electronic integrated system yet. We will do that
once get the funding, optimistically in 2003. We have the processes
ready."

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