Summaries for September 1, 2008

NGA WANTS TO MAKE A MARKET IN SPATIAL DATA
“Where am I?”  It's a question that has perplexed people since we crawled out of the primordial ooze.  David Cacner of the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency is working on geospatial information systems that will help answer the age old question in an exciting high tech way.
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TANKER PROCUREMENT BATTLE GETS FRESH FUEL
The Air Force tanker combatants continue to circle one another. In the latest round, the winning puncher is Boeing, which threatened to pull out of the competition if the Air Force didn't give it more time to prepare a new bid. Will Boeing really sit this one out? -> Read More

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Early bird registration for IRMCO 2009 opens September 15! Plan now to attend IRMCO 2009 on April 19-22, 2009 at the Hyatt Regency Chesapeake Bay in Cambridge, Maryland. Federal Travel Regulation; Conference Planning-Prepayment of Registration Fee, FTR Amendment 2006-02 allows for the reimbursement of the prepayment of early bird discounted registration fees to attend a conference, so take advantage of the IRMCO 2009 early bird rates. The 48th annual government-only gathering of agency career and political leaders is the premier place to network and discuss the government's challenges.

IRMCO, GSA's Interagency Resources Management Conference, has been produced by GSA since 1961 to serve the needs of the government's senior executives. The three-day retreat provides these leaders the opportunity for dialogue with experts in organizational change, peer-to-peer discussion of strategies to transform their agencies, and insightful keynotes from industry and government visionaries.

Bookmark www.irmco.gov to register early for government's management conference. To register call 202-237-0300.

AFFIRM Luncheon - What Keeps a Federal Chief Information Security Officer up at Night? Attend the Association For Federal Information Resources Management (AFFIRM) Luncheon on September 18 at George Washington University in Washington D.C.  and hear from Patrick Howard, CISO from NRC and formerly HUD, Dennis Heretick, recently retired CISO from DOJ, Jerry L. Davis, Deputy CIO, IT Security, National Aeronautics & Space Administration, and Michael F. Brown, Director, Office of Information Systems Security (ISS), Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) as they discuss current challenges, constraints, and security IT goals in a year of change.  To register visit http://www.affirm.org/events/monthlyluncheons/sep08/.

ARMY COMBAT SYSTEMS ARE GOING ON A DIET
As the Air Force struggles with how big its aerial refueling tankers should be, the Army is figuring out how small some of its flying and ground-crawling devices should be.  It looks like the Army's Future Combat Systems project is going lean with its new fighting machines. -> Read More

CYBERWARFARE: NO LONGER IF, BUT WHEN AND HOW
If you are old enough to remember the Great Northeast Blackout of 1965, you'll recall that many people's initial reaction was, “It must be the communists.” Well, it wasn't. But some security experts believe the widespread blackout in August of 2003 was a different story. Whether we care to admit it or not, cyberwarfare is a fact of life. -> Read More

INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY'S DALE MEYEROSE MAKES HIS EXIT
Dale Meyerrose, retired Air Force Major General and CIO for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, will retire this month. What's next for Meyerrose? -> Read More

• NGA Wants to Make a Market in Spatial Data

  Dave Cacner

  “Where am I?”

  It's a question that has perplexed people since we crawled out of the primordial ooze.

  As David Cacner puts it, “Everyone needs to know where you are and what your surroundings are.” He's in a good position to see that demand, as Chief of Marketing and Requirements in the eGEOINT office of the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA). GEOINT is not an acronym but an insider's mashup of the words geospatial and intelligence.

  Geospatial information systems, Cacner points out, date back to the mainframe computing days. The data used to be expensive and hard to work with. Perhaps because he is a former cartographer who drew maps by hand and understands how much of a blend of art and science maps really are, Cacner is enthusiastic about the possibilities of geospatial intelligence.

  Two factors have revolutionized geographic or geospatial information.

  First is Google Earth and the views it brought to the masses. Says Cacner, “Google Earth was a game change in bringing GIS to John Q. Public.” People who used to, well, “google” one another now view flyovers and drive-bys of other people's homes.

  The second is the advent of Web 2.0 services, which in part separate applications from data, thereby giving applications access to any data anywhere that is formatted in a standard way. For geospatial data, that format is KML, or keyhole markup language, a derivative of the familiar XML dominant on the web.

  So if you've got demand for data and have a means of making large amounts of it accessible, then you've really got something. And that is the idea driving eGEOINT.

  “Our mission is enabling data so it can be used,” says Cacner. “In the past, people had data on CDs, tapes and in a tower-of-babble array of formats. Now we're in a world of Web 2.0. So applications can pull data in.” The front end of such applications is the web browser.

  Also driving the geospatial world, and NGA in particular, is the growing ubiquity of sensors giving ever more fine-grained information about the world. Every GPS-enabled device is a potential sensor. Shuttle, satellite, radar and other sources of data generate vast stores of data that, if formatted as to be interoperable, can be available to an array of applications limited only by the rights to particular data individuals have.

  In late August, NGA's eGEOINT rolled out a new web site, GEOINT Online, within NGA's redesigned public site. GEOINT Online is a one-stop shop for authorized users to find spatial information datasets. Users — generally confined to federal civilian and defense users — can be individuals or whole collaborative communities such as the intelligence community itself is struggling to become. Cacner says that individuals or communities of interest that want links to other data stores or a particular data set added to GEOINT Online can suggest it to NGA for inclusion.

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• Tanker Procurement Battle Gets Fresh Fuel

  The Air Force tanker combatants continue to circle one another. In the latest round, the winning puncher is Boeing, which threatened to pull out of the competition if the Air Force didn't give it more time to prepare a new bid.

  Why? Because in the latest adjustment to the solicitation, which the Pentagon — not the Air Force — released following the successful award protest by Boeing, more importance is given to buying a larger plane than in the original solicitation. The winning Northrop Grumman bid went with an Airbus that's bigger than the B-767 derivative Boeing bid.

  My take on Boeing's threat to scoop up its marbles: This gambit, it believes, will result in a split decision. Both companies will be tapped to build next-generation tankers. Never mind that unit and lifecycle costs, and program complexity will rise. This tangled acquisition has moved into the political realm, where a no-competition award for a “foreign” built plane, well, it just won't fly.

  In the aftermath of sole-source and no-bid awards in Iraq, Boeing officials must realize that the tanker program can't go further without the Chicago-based company. Yet the Air Force is inclined towards Northrop Grumman's bid. The way out is to split the baby, on the grounds perhaps that the smaller plane can better refuel smaller craft, and the larger plane, the big ones.

  Whatever. Boeing doesn't really mean to sit this one out.

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• Army Combat Systems are Going on a Diet

  As the Air Force struggles with how big its aerial refueling tankers should be, the Army is figuring out how small some of its flying and ground-crawling devices should be.

  Ordinarily, IT supports platforms. That is, onboard computer systems guide and control aircraft or armament platforms, and help their ordnance reach a target. But, in recent years, aircraft and vehicles have come to support IT. That is, visual and other types of sensors rely on unmanned vehicles to put the electronic eyes and ears where they are needed to generate visual and other data. Put another way, whereas a big tank or bomber requires a crew to operate and guide it, the way Future Combat Systems is being deployed reverses that equation. The systems, unmanned, are deployed to support soldiers on foot or in light vehicles.

  One air-enabled IT platform is the XM156 Class I unmanned aerial vehicle. As ungainly-looking as its name implies, the backpack-able vehicle resembles nothing so much as a canister vacuum cleaner turned inside out. In the Army's words, it “provides the dismounted soldier with reconnaissance, surveillance, and target acquisition (RSTA) and laser designation.” That is, it performs as an aerial set of eyes and ears linked into a backbone network.

  The Army is also fielding a ground robotic scout that can peek at the enemy and send back pictures and positioning information. It is about the size of a toy wagon and weighs less than 30 pounds.

  What these platforms show is that the Army's approach to netcentric warfare, as embodied in its Future Combat Systems project, has evolved. The primacy of smaller, more mobile combat units and the decreased emphasis on cold war-style weaponry mean the form factors to which FCS technologies are applied are shrinking. (Remember the 60-ton Crusader cannon? Even the big boy's replacement is supposed to weigh in at a mere 18 tons.)

  The FCS IT systems will need to be packed into iPod sized packages, not the rack mount modules the weight of which would not be noticed in a tank with a crew of three.

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• Cyberwarfare: No Longer If, But When and How

  If you are old enough to remember the Great Northeast Blackout of 1965, you'll recall that many people's initial reaction was, “It must be the communists.” The event, which affected an estimated 25 million people over an 80,000 square mile area, spawned a lot of hysterics and legends. Tales of UFO sightings and myths of an extra dollop of babies being born exactly nine months after the event persist to this day. I was 10 years old and practicing the piano at the moment the lights went off in suburban Boston, and I recall the full moon and the big mess of Chinese food my family had by candlelight with the family next door.

  Well, it wasn't the communists, but a mistake in a relay setting that caused a cascading overload in the grid. In those days, there was no concept of a cyber attack or a network based assault designed to disrupt vital services.

  The widespread blackout in August of 2003 is a different story. Some cyber security experts believe network hacks originating in China caused computer alarm failures, which contributed to the blackout. A National Journal story by Shane Harris earlier this year summarized the thinking on this theory, which has become something of an article of faith in security circles.

  Then there was the revelation this summer by Rep. Frank Wolfe (R-Va.) that Chinese hackers had penetrated his office's network and stolen data.

  Widespread news reports also said Russia — a well-known source of cyber mischief — pretty much shut down Georgia's computer networks before it invaded and occupied that country. The U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit was monitoring the situation, although FCW reported the Russian embassy denied any involvement in the Georgian cyber attacks.

  Yeah, sure.

  Whether we care to admit it or not, cyberwarfare is a fact of life. It has sparked an array of policies in the U.S. , including the Trusted Internet Connection and Domain Name system protection mandates coming out of the Office of Management and Budget. Consequently, the market for products and services to repel attacks and, equally as important, to ascertain enemy cyber profiles and design countermeasures will continue to grow.

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• Intelligence Community’s Dale Meyerrose Makes His Exit

  Dale Meyerrose, the retired Air Force major general who became CIO for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, will retire this month. Meyerrose, a frequent and tireless speaker on behalf of information sharing and the organizational culture change that comes with it, made a lot of progress in getting the once stovepiped organizations within the ODNI to share their information goods.

  He had experience in new organizations, having been the CIO of the Northern Command, which stood up in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.

  Last week in an interview on Federal News Radio, Meyerrose didn't rule out a return to public service should the new administration request his services. But in the meantime, he said he is seeking opportunities in the private sector.

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