FORT MEADE, MD: “Remember the peace dividend we took in the Clinton years in the ’90s? Welcome back,” said Douglas Packard. “That’s where we’re at.” Some 20 years ago as defense budgets plummeted post-Cold War, the defense industry consolidated, recalled Packard, acting head of procurement at the Defense Information Systems Agency. Contractors better beware once more,… Keep reading →

COLORADO SPRINGS: The intelligence community is on the verge of “revolutionary” technical advances. Spy satellites and other systems will be able to watch a place or a person for long periods of time and warn intelligence analysts and operatives when target changes its behavior. Satellites and their sensors could be redirected automatically to ensure nothing is missed. “We will… Keep reading →

This year, the Defense Information Systems Agency has ambitious plans to streamline and speed up how military personnel access applications and services on the Defense Department’s computer networks. These efforts include launching a new pan-service user environment, making enterprise services easier to use and access, increasing the offerings and capabilities of cloud based systems, and… Keep reading →

New technology creates new capabilities — and new vulnerabilities. “Moving to the cloud” is the trend du jour, even in the intelligence world, but the recent attacks on the nation’s banking system has raised uncomfortable questions about how to make cloud computing secure. “The cloud” may seem amorphous, but in reality it consists of a… Keep reading →

Technology is not enough. What’s equally essential is ideas for how to use it. Wielding new weapons in the same old way is a recipe for defeat. As the US military today invests in innovative programs, none larger than the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, it must also invent innovative concepts of operation. The Air Force’s… Keep reading →

The Defense Department has awarded a first of its kind joint enterprise licensing agreement for Microsoft collaboration, mobility, productivity and security tools. Valued at $617 million, the three-year agreement will allow the Army, Air Force and the Defense Information Systems Agency to begin using the latest versions of the company’s products. The agreement creates a… Keep reading →

The intelligence community is developing a single cloud computing network to allow all its analysts to access and rapidly sift through massive volumes of data. When fully complete, this effort will create a pan-agency cloud, with organizations sharing many of the same computing resources and information. More importantly, the hope is the system will break… Keep reading →

The International Telecommunications Union sent shock waves across the Internet with an agreement approved last night which would give countries a right to access international telecommunications services including Internet traffic. While the U.S., Canada, Australia, Norway, Denmark, and other countries refused to go along with the measure, the motion carried in a decision that caught… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: While Army forces in Afghanistan have more bandwidth and gadgetry than ever, bases back home still make do with archaic copper-wire telephone switches. As the war winds down and units increasingly operate out of the US, the challenge for the Army’s CIO is to move the whole service to a single set of compatible,… Keep reading →

Defense Department and intelligence community officials have been talking about open source software as the next great thing for government technology programs for years. Why all the love? Speaking at a recent industry gathering, government officials described what they like about the software: it’s affordable, flexible, and can be quickly modified by developers because they… Keep reading →