The DoDIIS 2012 Worldwide Conference was held April 1-4 in Denver, CO. The purpose of the conference was to provide attendees an opportunity to meet with government clients and other IT professionals to discuss the agency's focus and what technology advancements can be utilized to accomplish goals set forth by the CIO. The theme of this year's conference was, Consolidation and Collaboration. The program addressed how the DoDIIS enterprise could consolidate their many redundant systems and services while collaborating with other intelligence agencies to provide more efficient services to the war fighter and to those supporting the mission of protecting national security.
Each day was full of informative sessions led by senior executives from DIA, United States Army, Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence (USD(I)), Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), Department of Defense (DoD), Intelligence Community (IC), National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), National Security Agency/Central Security Service (NSA/CSS), and the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense. Industry speakers from Symantec, EMC Corporation, FedEx Services and an academic speaker from Pennsylvania State University were featured to showcase different perspectives of the IT field and to share their capabilities.
One of the most informative sessions was led by Janice Glover (DIA) discussing the Common Operating Environment (COE). This session provided an introduction to the Intelligence Community Common Operating Environment, its capabilities, benefits, and long-term goals to create seamless collaboration and better enabling of data sharing across the IC agencies. Once it is fully operational, the COE will allow DIA civilians and contractors to visit NSA in Fort Meade, log on with a central user ID, and experience the same operating environment (desktop, applications, and email) as if the user had logged in from their home DIA location (DIAC or Charlottesville). This will be a major accomplishment - currently, DIA employees that log onto a computer at an NSA location must do so by locating one of the 4 or 5 DIA terminals, waiting 30 - 45 minutes for the machine to recognize the user ID and boot, and subsequently dealing with delayed communications. The COE is long overdue and has the full backing of many Intelligence executives.
The E-volve team recognizes that there will be a great deal of future opportunities with the COE. We have reached out to several key players that will have a strong presence in the configuration of the program. We hope to play a major role and will keep you posted of further developments.