Moderator

Jim Flyzik, the Flyzik Group





Panelists

Dale Meyerrose, CIO, Office of the Director of National Intelligence

Vance Hitch, CIO, Department of Justice

Zal Azmi, CIO, FBI

Carter Morris, Director, Information Sharing & Knowledge Management Intelligence and Analysis, DHS

 Karen Evans, Administrator of E-Government and Information Technology, OMB






Greg J. Baroni, Corporate Vice President, President, Global Public Sector, Unisys Corporation






Daniel P. Kent, Director, Systems Engineering, Federal Area, Cisco Systems, Inc.

What is your office’s role in promoting information and intelligence sharing and improving it for our country?

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

On today’s show we will discuss critical issues facing government and industry leaders in the area of information and intelligence sharing.

With me today on the show, distinguished guests include: Karen Evans, the Administrator of E-Government and Information Technology, Office of Management and Budget; Dale Meyerrose, CIO, Office of the Director of National Intelligence; Van Hitch, CIO, Department of Justice; Zal Azmi, CIO, FBI; Carter Morris, the Director of Information Sharing and Knowledge Management, the Intelligence and Analysis Director at the Department of Homeland Security; Greg Baroni, the President of Global Public Sector,  UNISYS Corporation; and  Dan Kent, the Director of Systems Engineering, CISCO Systems.

Let’s jump right into today’s program and go to our distinguished guests. I’d like to first ask each of the guests to describe briefly to the audience your office’s role in promoting information and intelligence sharing and improving it for our country. Let’s start with Karen Evans. Karen?

KAREN EVANS, OMB

Good afternoon Jim, it’s a pleasure to be back and my office in particular is involved because we look at this as a business line for us, information sharing across the enterprise. So I am responsible for managing the federal enterprise architecture and I work very closely with each one of these offices, each person, here, the CIO from each organization, so that we can make sure those investments of tax payers’ dollars are used to the maximum extent possible that promotes the information sharing.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Great. We do have an awesome group here. It seems like we should be able to solve a lot of problems here today.  Dale Meyerrose. Dale I know your office is relatively new to the scene but it’s obviously playing a critical role. Can you describe it a little bit? Some of your goals there?

DALE MEYERROSE, DNI

Sure can Jim. Good afternoon. Pleasure to be here. As many folks know, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence was created by the Intelligence Reform Terrorism Prevention Act of December 2004, and the specific reason for its creation had to do with improving intelligence with regard to information sharing. In fact the director of national intelligence top priorities is information sharing along with the global war on terrorism bringing new and innovative ways to intelligence and weapons of mass destruction commission.

To point out the obvious, the I in CIO stands for information not infrastructure and so while many folks tend to think of the CIO as being someone who works solely with systems and technology, in fact my office is responsible for working with information sharing for the director of national intelligence.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Greg Baroni from UNISYS we’ve talked public private partnerships and the need for the private sector to be involved in this issue since a lot of information comes from private sector open sources. Can you give us an idea of how a private sector company such as UNISYS plays an important role? The way you view this issue?

GREG BARONI, UNISYS

Thanks Jim. From the private sector standpoint, we look at this from a multiple set of viewpoints. What we are looking at is how can we contribute to this equation here? There’s no question that it’s going to take a united effort to ensure success and the private sector has a major role in that.

What we’ve been doing is two fold. One is working through industry associations and forums to help identify standards, both from an architecture, from an enterprise architecture standpoint, as well as data standards and process standards that might help this equation. Like most problems, this is not only a technology problem, it’s like a three legged stool. It’s people process and technology. The other thing that we are doing as a company is we’ve been working on defining a set of tools and methodologies that would give visibility to an enterprise. We call that 3-D visible enterprise, and we’ve been working on that for quite some time.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Van Hitch, Van the Department of Justice, I know, I’ve heard you brief on some of the very extensive programs, and a lot of the initiatives and I’d like you to share with the audience some of the key things going on at the justice level.

VAN HITCH, JUSTICE

Sure Jim. Well as the Chief Information Officer at the Department of Justice, I work very closely with the Deputy Attorney General to coordinate a program that we call the law enforcement information sharing program.

This is really an umbrella program, it is not a system, but it’s a series of all the initiatives we have going at the Department of Justice that deal with the many issues associated with information sharing from a policy standpoint, from a cultural change standpoint, as well as a systems standpoint and as the CIO I am very aware that we have about 30 some programs going on, and that have been going on, at the Department of Justice that in some way relate to information sharing. So it’s my job to make sure that they are all coordinated and that we are making the best use of each one of those. So, I coordinate those programs within the department and this has been going on now for about three years.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Good, thanks Van. Zal Azmi, the CIO of the FBI. I guess most Americans when they think of information sharing, intelligence sharing, they think that the FBI will take a lead role also. Zal tell us about what’s going on at the FBI in this area.

ZAL AZMI, FBI

First of all thank you for the opportunity to be here. I would say that the mission of the FBI since 9/11 has changed dramatically. My office, the primary goal of my office has been spearheading the information sharing and working with our offices within the bureau, the national security branch and the law enforcement branch, to define what information we need internally and also what information we need to share with our law enforcement and intelligence community partners.

I would say that information sharing is one of the top priorities of the FBI. And that area, as Van talked about, the LEISP program a number of technologies and capabilities that we have developed in support of the LEISP those technologies are managed within the bureau to ensure that we get the right information to the right people at the right time.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Terrific. Dan, Dan Kent from CISCO systems, I guess we think of CISCO as being sort of an enabler that helps put some of the tools in place to allow some of these things that happen. But Dan, can you give us some perspective from your vantage point?

DAN KENT, CISCO

Sure Jim. First of all as Greg was saying, it is people, process and technology and CISCO’s really dealing from a technology perspective point of view. We’ve done a lot with information sharing and driving that on the technology side and critical to that is security as we want to ensure that only the right people get access to the data.

So we’ve been working a lot with enabling security or integrating security into these systems to be truly enabling information sharing. Both in the traditional sense of information sharing but also in a real time sense of situational awareness and collaboration.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Carter Morris at DHS, I guess if you look back in history, DHS is still a relatively new player in our federal government and I guess most people look at DHS as stacking up and being a focal point to help coordinate a lot of this that needs to take place and I understand that Carter you are now a focal point within DHS. You’ve got an awesome task in front of you but can you share with us perhaps some of the directions you are going in this area?

CARTER MORRIS, DHS

Thank you Jim and I’m very happy to be here and have a chance to talk about where we are at DHS. Through last summer, the secretary put together what’s called the second stage review where we looked at how we could better structure DHS in order to handle these issues, and one of these was setting up the office of intelligence analysis as a focal point in bringing more emphasis to the information movement and as part of that, my position as the director of information sharing and knowledge management was established.

The first task that I was given was to go out and develop a intelligence information architecture for the department. And one of the emphases there was simply to tie the department together, particularly the intelligence elements within our office of intelligence and analysis and the intelligence elements of the components into an effective information sharing domain. Also, as part of that architecture is to reach out and move information out to what are some of our primary customers and that is particularly the local, state tribal and private sectors that we have to communicate.

So right now we are in the process of looking at how we can make all of that work in a much better way so that we can move the information that needs to be moved.

How do you go about determining what information needs to be shared?

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Terrific. I’d like to change and talk a little bit about information sharing. I’ve been in a number of forums where people talk about information sharing and how hard can that be? On the other hand there is such a thing as information overload, too much information and how do you determine the right information. And where I’d like to go with this is: are we getting a good idea about the kinds of information that needs to be shared and what is that right information? Let’s start in the middle with Van Hitch. Van, how do you go about determining what information needs to be shared?

VAN HITCH, JUSTICE

Well, certainly you’ve hit the nail on the head because that is a big problem, as opposed to the popular conception which is that information is not shared but in fact information is shared fairly broadly but it’s got to be the right information to make sure that we can help each of our agencies accomplish their mission.

For example, in counter terrorism, what we are trying to do is connect the dots and providing people with reams and reams of information that they have to go through when they really need specific information to nail down a specific line of thinking is what it is all about. So, one of the things that we have to do is to make sure that we are going after the right stuff. And some of that in the law enforcement area is things like tips, targets, conflictions so that the different law enforcement divisions can work together, and reports on incidents.

And we have groups working with us like the FBI. The criminal justice information system advisory policy board is a group of law enforcement officers from around the country who work with that to help us figure out, what is the kind of information that will be the most useful for them.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

So Carter, from the DHS perspective, how are you guys looking at trying to break down, and analyze, synthesize, determine what information needs to be shared? Is there a process you are going through there?

CARTER MORRIS, DHS

I find those very interesting questions. Having worked in this information environment, both inside the department and in the community now for several months, I believe that is one of the biggest questions that is facing us and that is: what are we really concerned about in the information sharing business.  I had the opportunity to talk with ambassador Ted McNamara yesterday, he’s the new program manager for terrorism information sharing, and one of the things that we were particularly talking about was how do we establish priorities within that

domain of things that we really need to focus on. And I thought that we are really moving aggressively forward in trying to do that.

I’ll just tell one little story real quickly. Since I have been at DHS, we have spent more time discussing with our state and local partners what is not a threat than what is a threat - meaning that there is a lot of information flowing down their own tracks that is not really new information or new threats. So one of the things that I have taken on the job for our community to try to do is to look at our information dissemination processes and to understand how we can bring some more order to that such that we are not just sending words, but are making sure that the message that we are trying to convey gets out there. And that’s a real challenge to us. So determining the priorities in this business is something we all have to work real hard at and I don’t think that we are there yet.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

I’m sure between the cultures and the history and all that… Karen, do you have a comment on all this?

KAREN EVANS, OMB

Well, I’d like to follow up on a point that Carter made. I think that the way that the Intelligence Act is set up, as well as the executive orders that the administration has set forward, it really does envision that there is this information sharing environment, and that technology is not the reason and what are the business policy and laws that keep us from sharing that information, or may inhibit our ability, because we may not necessarily know what we don’t know.

So we have to have the ability to be able to get to the information so that an analyst can put together the pieces when they see things based on roles and access. So there’s a lot of discussion that happens.

All of us are participants on what they call the information sharing council, which was also set up by the Intelligence Reform Act and there is a group that the president has tasked to put together policies and guidelines, the presidential guidelines that are required by this, that will facilitate that, so this is a hard nut to crack. But the intent is that there is an environment and it’s broad when you talk about terrorism information, but it is taking all the government’s information and making it available.

And things that are happening like the president’s initiative on health IT, if you look at that, there is a piece that has to tie directly into this information sharing environment that deals with bio-surveillance. So, none of us work in a vacuum any more. All of us are putting things together in a way that you have to put it and maximize the sharing because you don’t know who is going to have to use that data when you are collecting that data.

Many new systems that are ready to roll and things that have been designed and need to move out, but they need to go through what is often times a lengthy certification and accreditation process in order to comply with all the applicable rules and regulations. How you see us getting this process to move quicker?

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Welcome back. Here with our distinguished panelists talking about information and intelligence sharing. I’d like to shift now and talk about some of the constraints and barriers that have been holding us down, so to speak. I know that from my time in government, I heard about many new systems that are ready to role and things that have been designed and need to move out, but they need to go through what is often times a lengthy certification and accreditation process in order to comply with all the applicable rules and regulations.

And it seems that we need a sense of urgency around this information and intelligence sharing and we need to find ways to get through that process much more quickly. Dale Meyerrose, can you give us your vision for how you see us getting this process to move quicker?

DALE MEYERROSE, DNI

Sure, thanks Jim. As you stated, certification and accreditation is the methodology by which we incorporate technology, technology related processes into our information handling systems. And the goal is to balance risk, security, privacy and costs. Unfortunately, a lot of the policy and the elements in our current certification and accreditation processes is our pre-net environment, pre internet in some cases.

As a result, we have security policies and risk methodologies which don’t take into account the modern networking environment. And in many cases it takes months and sometimes stretching into years the ability to accredit and certify certain types of technology particularly into our intelligence systems. And we believe that now is a good time, with the creation of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, to bring this to the front and to involve industry, academia, all the agencies within the intelligence business and also agencies across the United States government, into a process reengineering certification and accreditation and that is something we will undertake this coming summer.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

You know I think that’s a win-win Dale as I think the private sector would like to see this tackled also. And I’d like to hear from Greg and Dan in a minute. But before we do that, Zal, is this an issue over at the FBI, is certification and accreditation something that you guys struggle with over there also?

ZAL AZMI, FBI

I think not only the FBI but most of the organizations are struggling with the C and A process. I will say that within the bureau we’ve made the C and A processes part of our life cycle methodology for system development. So from the time we invest into an IT program, security starts, but more than anything, we are actually looking forward to working with both the Department of Justice and OMB in streamlining the process.

Because one of the things that we look forward to is that the same C and A process of certification would be accepted across all communities, whether it’s DOD or intelligence community or law enforcement, and that will be the key and so the guidance coming from OMB would be the success in this process.  

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

That’s a great point Zal, that acceptance across multiple agencies. I would like to hear from Greg and then Dan from the industry perspective. I know Greg often times, the industry is beat up for not getting things done quick enough but you are faced with needing to get these systems through these sometimes lengthy processes also before you are able to deploy into production. Do you have any comments on this process?

GREG BARONI, UNISYS

From my standpoint, it’s like many standards that come out. They are required, they move in a model of trust between enterprises and so often the real issue does come down to trust. You’ve got to start somewhere and so the C and A process, while not perfect, is a place to start. Over time with all these folks here, I am confident that we will evolve those standards to something that is more productive than are somewhat not today.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

I think you are right, this is one where industry and government are on the same side and want to try and move forward. Dan? How about from the CISCO perspective?

DAN KENT, CISCO

Absolutely Jim, this is an area where we spend a lot of time and money to ensure that our products are certified so that they can get into the government and we’d love to hear that you are looking to change that process or speed it up. Because what we find, in order to get something off the shelf, we need to get a process that can be done in months rather than years.

We have a lifecycle of software of less than 12 months so typically what happens is that once the certification and accreditation is done, the software is already outdated. Then when you add nested certifications, what I mean by that is if you talk about a security certification then add on top of that an IPv6 certification it really makes it difficult. So the process I understand is required, we need it, but if we could speed it up it would be wonderful for everybody.

April 14, 2006 • Volume 4 • Number 6

Is there some thought going into the process of how information flows the other direction from the local level back upwards through state and then into the federal level?

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Great. I participated in a recent industry day at MIT we discussed a number of subject, and one of the subjects that came on the table,  I was the only one there from a federal perspective, we had a lieutenant governor and some other folks from MIT and so forth, and they quickly jumped to the issue that it shouldn’t always be thought about as federal leads in some of these issues such as information sharing.

We all know that there are terrorist incidents and disasters and all, they all begin local and the response begins local. And the question was, is there some thought going into the process of information flows the other direction -  from the local level back upwards through state and then into the federal level. I’m curious, I’d like to hear how the panel addresses that. Why don’t we start with Carter and we’ll work our way down so I can get the perspective of each of the panelists on how about flows the other way from local, or from the average citizen who has information and wants to get that information moved upward.

CARTER MORRIS, DHS

Certainly that’s an area that we are very conscious of and there are a number of different activities that are already in place to do that such as Tips programs that the FBI has that report activities that we oversee and trying to do that. We have an activity within our office where we are establishing a new connection and communication link with states and locals and private sectors to allow flow of information both ways.

We have a community effort now going on looking at what we call suspicious activity reporting and how we can bring together all of the various suspicious activity data bases that exist within the community, and everybody has one. There are many methods by which that is allowed to happen. We get these reports. Whether we are coordinating them and dealing with them effectively at a federal level is a question, as I said, that this group is looking at.

But let me say that it does create issues because one of the things that you are going to have in that is that that information is going to come back with US person data in them, so you are going to have it and how are you going to handle this information effectively within the domain particularly as you have this overlap between the intelligence community and law enforcement community and how you house such information will be a critical thing.

Also when we deal with the state and local areas, they don’t necessarily want to give you information and then allow you to do whatever you want to with it. In the intelligence community we used to call it originated control. Well, that applies in many areas and so when they share information they want to make sure they understand what happens to that information. So, lots of programs, but still lots of issues to deal with.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Great. Let’s hear from the government guest on this local state information sharing and then I’ll ask our private sector guest about sharing information with the private sector. Zal, how about information sharing over at the FBI? How are you getting information from local areas up to sharing at the federal level?

ZAL AZMI, FBI

I think Carter mentioned already the FBI’s help line which is a web based application where people can actually send us threat incident based information. There’s also a hot line. But the key point that was made in here is that most of the people gave us that information and they wanted to know what happened to that information.

About a year ago we implemented a program called guardian which has close to 60,000 threats actually logged into it and after reviewing that with the national security branch we also realized that some of that information, we should be sharing that with the law enforcement. So in the near future we will be actually releasing a version of it called eguardian, electronic guardian for our law enforcement on line network, so that our local law enforcement communities have access to it.

We also have a number of other initiatives that we are working with citizens. Infoguard a type of security program that is very successful so there are different mechanisms for the FBI to actually interact with local and state and also with the private sector.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Great. Van, from the Justice level, I know you’ve got a lot of programs going on next generation NCIC and indexing the data across the country. Can you share some of those things with us?

VAN HITCH, JUSTICE

Sure. Within the law enforcement community actually there is a long established model of information sharing and upward flow of information from the state and local community. The system that is used by every police officer in the country is called NCIS, the National Criminal Information System.

And in that they report all of the of the people that they are searching for and that they have picked up and so forth and they can also check around the whole country to see if somebody is in the system that has been reported by other state or local organizations. Also the fingerprint system is a national system and that is shared from the local up to the federal to make that available and the FBI serves as the coordinating point for both of those systems. So we are using that model as a way of building our future systems.

So the regional indexing system that we are building to share with these regional intelligence centers around the country, is a way that we can then put all our information and come together as one DOJ, as we call it, which is all the law enforcement components of it, the parts together putting all their information together in one data base to make that available to these regional information sharing centers and likewise to get information from those regional centers back to the federal government. We are following that same model of information sharing from the state and local level up through the law enforcement systems of the future.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Terrific. Dale, I’m sure the Director of National Intelligence has this issue on the table also. How do you guys gather information from state and local sources to be used in your work?

DALE MEYERROSE, DNI

The thing that a lot of people tend to forget is that when you generate intelligence or information in your organization you are not going to know who the consumer of that product is. And so the ability to put it in a format that can be easily shipped, easily shared, and sometimes easily controlled, particularly when you are talking about issues of security and privacy and all those other kinds of things.

Our enterprise architectures have to be constructed with that in mind. What is the intended outcome? Often times that stretches beyond the borders of our respective organizations. As a segue we have going down but it’s also going across organizations. The thing that a lot of people tend to think of information flow as being vertical, but information flow needs to be horizontal with people at the same level working the same problem having the same information, each in their own useful format.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Karen Evans, whom I think many of us look at as having the responsibility of looking across the entire federal front in thinking this issue through with the state and local. What is the OMB perspective, or your perspective?

KAREN EVANS, OMB

I think many of the points have been hit upon by my colleagues going down the line, talking specifically about making sure that we are focused on the outcome and the outcome is sharing the information to the maximum extent possible within roles and responsibilities, ensuring privacy and civil liberties. So that’s a great mouthful going forward, but there are things that we have done.

The administration has updated the executive order going forward and if you haven’t had the opportunity to read it I would encourage your readers to go out and look at executive order 13388 which is ‘Furthering, Strengthening the Sharing of Terrorism Information to protect Americans.’ And it’s very specific about how the information sharing council works.

This isn’t a problem that’s going to be solved overnight and it also allows the flexibility to have members from state and local and even industry if necessary to join the council to deal with specific topics as necessary going forward, so that we can then tackle those issues, take them forward and share them across the board. There’s a privacy and civil liberties board that’s set up.

There are rules, privacy rules that apply to all government agencies they need to look at. We touched on that certification and accreditation and how they need to evaluate those systems. But the goal is, and what we do at OMB often, which they may not like, is we always ask so how is this going to improve information sharing? If we issue those standards, and we can have a lot of standards going, and we can have a lot of activity going and you can hear about all the activities today, but it is that getting me to the goal of information sharing to prevent the next terrorism incident?

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Yes, well put. Greg and Dan, we hear often times that a large majority, up to 90%, of the nation’s critical infrastructure is owned and operated by the private sector and so this idea of information sharing has to bring in a component of private sector sharing of information with different levels of government. I’m wondering, I’ll start with Greg from UNISYS and then Dan from CISCO, from your perspective, how do you see this private industry, federal, or government at all levels, sharing of information issue?

GREG BARONI, UNISYS

Thanks Jim and from my perspective, every analyst has already recognized that the front lines for this battle is really in the private sector. That’s where the bulk of the data, the critical infrastructure etc, is owned by the private sector and while there are executive orders and the Safety Act and a lot of activities going on here, frankly I’ve been pretty frustrated because I feel like that vertical flow that Dale just referenced, there has been a lot of discussion and white papers on the topic, but little around pilots and scenarios that bring to life. And I on behalf of UNISYS and other corporations, I would be glad to participate more actively. And that’s not to say that other forums for sharing information aren’t there, but I feel like there’s been a loss of urgency following 9/11.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Those are great points Greg and hopefully bringing groups like this here today, hopefully we are trying to probe that issue. Let’s hear from Dan and then from Carter. Dan?

DAN KENT, CISCO

From a CISCO point of view, I’m not sure that I would see it the same way. We typically get involved in sharing working with the government on programs, more vertical than horizontal and I think it’s pretty strong there in terms of the information sharing within this and we really don’t see the horizontal aspect probably where it’s growing more.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Thanks for that perspective. Carter Morris from DHS.

CARTER MORRIS, DHS

Certainly the sharing with the private sector is one of the key areas that we are trying to stress within DHS. A lot of the responsibility of that lies within the preparedness directorate and making sure that they communicate threats and risks with the private sector. There is a joint effort with preparedness and our Office of Intelligence Analysis has which is a homeland infrastructure threat risk analysis center, which we are helping the staff of to be much more aggressive in the sharing of this kind of information with them.

We have a long history of sharing with the private sector particularly the Transportation Security Administration and the transportation business that is a very close allied, coast guard has also dealt with ports in many cases. But there are some contention issues here and one is, I had a meeting last week with some state and local representatives, we were talking information sharing, and they expressed very strongly their concern of a direct federal/private sector interaction without the state and locals being keyed-in to what exactly is going on. They wanted to make that point very strongly in that case, because the company gets a threat information, it goes to the governor and he comes down and asks the state what is going on and they don’t know. So that has to continue to be a part of that.

The other issue that we struggle with and I don’t know the answer to this, is that certain industries are wary in sharing all of their risk factors with everybody, including the federal government. And how we move down that path such that we can get a trusted environment so that we can discuss those more freely, I think is a challenge to all of us. But I think the key to that is establishing that trusted environment so that information can flow.

What is your Information Sharing vision for the future?

Welcome back. I’m here with our distinguished panel and in our final segment here I’m going to ask each panelist to briefly talk about further vision and how they see it going in the future and are we making progress. We’ll start with Karen Evans, the Administrator of E-Government and Information Technology, at the Office of Management and Budget. Karen, give us your perspective on where are we going with all of this.

KAREN EVANS, OMB

Well, information sharing, especially terrorist information sharing, remains a critical and high priority for this administration. But we also need to make sure that there is this transparency and there is a balance of security and privacy of that information. We will remain focused on this.

We have a lot of resources that have been brought to bear because I do not believe that the American people will accept the barriers with this law kept us from sharing information. The expectation is there. Every day when we go out and use the resources the next generation expects it that when they get on the Internet and they can ask questions and they can go across resources globally and get answers, they expect us within the federal government, state and local government, and in private industry, to be able to use that technology to solve these problems to win the global war on terror.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Well said Karen. Dale Meyerrose, CIO of the Director of National Intelligence Office who has an awesome job in front of him, but Dale, give us your vision for all of this.

DALE MEYERROSE, DNI

Sure, thanks Jim. Well, I think it’s important to do more than talk about information sharing. I think it’s important to have a strategy. And I think about it in three principal ways: first is how do you approach problem solving and attribute value to the mechanisms. I’ve found that thinking big, starting small and scaling fast is a good way to gain traction in any new enterprise and I would commend folks to adopt that as a strategy when talking about information sharing.

Second is to have and understand your reasons for sharing information whether it is situation awareness, collaboration decision making, or event management. It’s very important to be clear so that programs have direction and so that processes and organization have meaning. And lastly I think it’s important that we come up with an information sharing cycle that we can all subscribe to and rally around and I would submit that the first two parts of the information sharing cycle would be discovering access. How do I discover information? How do I discover partners? And then once that discovery is made, how do we grant access to that information both in a process sense, an organizational sense, and a technology sense.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Terrific. Thanks Dale. Greg Baroni the president of global access at UNISYS, Greg what is your vision for all this?

GREG BARONI, UNISYS

(Our vision is) One nation, sharing information to improve decision making and obviously to secure the homeland. The goal here is to disseminate trust and handle the information in such a way, both vertically and horizontally and dealing with both physical and cyber security risks with the goal of improving decision making. That’s the name of the game and from our standpoint. Make that vision a reality. We stand ready to work with the public sector to make sure that happens.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Good. Thanks Greg. Van Hitch the CIO at the Department of Justice. Van what is your vision for where all this is going?

VAN HITCH, JUSTICE

Well Jim, in the law enforcement world, everything is turning more towards preventing versus reacting. That’s true of terrorism, it’s true of all types of crimes whether it’s terrorism, drugs, or responding to a bomb threat or anything like that. It’s preventing them as opposed to reacting. So my job is to make sure that we have the tools available to make that as easy as possible. Not inundate with information, but make sure it’s the right information.

The other thing is, we have to remember that as a CIO it’s my job to make sure that the tools are available but we sill have these cultural barriers to overcome. I don’t think that can be overemphasized. We have to have a measures of effectiveness which will give us the incentive to share that information and make sure that we are working as a team as opposed to just as individual organizations and I think that is why an organization like the Office of the Director of National Intelligence is so important because it provides that cross governmental forum and the leadership to make sure we are sharing appropriately.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Well said Van, I think that more than once we’ve heard that culture term on the table and I know it’s a major challenge and one that we’ve just got to keep hammering away at and try to break down some of those traditional barriers. Zal Azmi, the CIO at the FBI. Zal, how about your vision for all this, where is this all going?

ZAL AZMI, FBI

Jim I would say that the access to information is really not dependent on the information as much as who needs it. This whole process of clearances, strict clearances and access levels. If we can streamline that across all domains, local, and state, intelligence communities, we can at least remove one of the barriers. I would also say that we really need to revisit what the federally classified information is in reality.

Sort of over classifying or is it available to share with local and state? In 2004, in December the director of the FBI talked to the budget policy board and informed them of our national information sharing strategy within FBI. And as such we looked at all of our programs, all of the data that we have in the bureau and the genesis of our original data exchange program is that we found information that we can readily share with local and state and that program is moving forward.

I would also say that the world has changed and we look at protecting information that must be controlled by more empowering at the lowest level at which the decision can made, not at the highest level. So it is important to actually empower our employees at a lower level to have access to information and act on that information that’s available.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Great. Great point Zal. I like that empowerment issue, I think we’ve heard about that one quite a bit too, trying to empower individuals to work and get information and feel comfortable with it and take some risks and so forth and breaking down some of those traditional chains of commands kinds of issues and get information moving around. Dan, from the CISCO point of view, what is your vision and your company vision for where all of this is going?

DAN KENT, CISCO

Sure Jim. So from the technical point of view, interoperability and security are really the two key enablers of information sharing. And we are really are focused on that. Working with our peers we are building architectures that will allow communities of interest to truly share in a real time environment and that implies a lot of underpinnings of technology as well as culture and policy and we are certainly working toward that and something that needs to look to the government agencies.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Carter? I know that over at DHS this is a major priority and you’re in the job now for several months can you give us a vision of where you see taking all this from the DHS?  

CARTER MORRIS, DHS

Well, I think, in contrast to my normal personality, I’m very optimistic about information sharing. I think that what this country has done and looking at it from both the intelligence and the law enforcement side since 9/11 are really phenomenal. I am very confident that information that we know should be shared will be shared. That’s not the problem. Karen mentioned before though that maybe information that we don’t know the value of and that is some of the challenges.

Today we have talked about a lot of the challenges we have here and I think they are very real to implement things. I think that the question that we started off with, what is information sharing and what are the issues there, what are the priorities, is still something we are really struggling with. We have to look at the tools and our ability to technically move information around. I think we have to look at the security levels and how do we deal with that information which is a big issue for us because we are operating at many different security levels and just the technical ability to move information between those levels is still a technical challenge for us, not being able to do that.

But having said all of those challenges, I think you do have a very vigorous community out there trying to do it. I don’t know that you have the kind of resources that will allow you to do everything so you are going to have to have some prioritization but overall I am very optimistic about this. 
 

What are your final thoughts on Information Sharing?

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Great. I tell you, if you look around this table here it gives me a sense of optimism and if you go back in time the Department of Homeland Security didn’t exist several years back. The FBI Justice, DNI, OMB, industry all sitting at the table all talking about the subject, I think that model in and of itself says something.  

Do you have any final words, we’ve got a few minutes left here. A final word from each of our panelists. Could we start again with Karen, a final word from you?

KAREN EVANS, OMB

Well, I think the challenges are out there. I do think you’ve hit the nail on the head. A couple of years ago, would you have seen this group of people here working very diligently to get that result of sharing information so that things could be done. 9/11 changed all that and there are a lot of people who have a lot of expectations on all of us here and I believe that all of us are rising to the occasion to deliver those results for the American people. So is it tough? Yes. Is it going to get better? You betcha!

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Dale?

DALE MEYERROSE, DNI

I’d like to echo a lot of what Karen said. We really have a lot of quality people in all organizations and across the intelligence community in general that are working this very hard, and to be pessimistic sells those folks short in the talent  and the dedication and the patriotism that they bring to the problem and I can speak for a lot of those folks to say that they are truly dedicated to working this to the best of our ability.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Great. Greg?

GREG BARONI, UNISYS

Trust and teamwork. It comes down to the issue of trust across all aspects of an enterprise all the way to the citizens. And then teamwork. It’s a public private partnership model and we stand ready to help in this way.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Well said. Dan?

DAN KENT, CISCO

I would just echo what’s already been said. I’m very optimistic. We have the right team. We have the mechanisms now in place and I think that’s important in the federal government, to work together in ways we’ve never worked before and we are working on better tools to make that a reality. So I’m very optimistic that we are not only improving but that we are going to be very successful.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Great. Zal?

ZAL AZMI, FBI

I have to echo everything that was said and I’m very confident that will happen. It’s all about partnership, it’s all about collaboration, having the right people at the table to make these decisions. It’s not something that we are just embarking on we’ve already done this we are sharing information, we just need to enhance our capability to do it better and get better.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Carter?

CARTER MORRIS, DHS

I think one of the key things that I always like to say is that quite often we are dealing with the issue of mission versus process and mission needs to win. A lot of what we are doing in the information sharing business are existing processes and we need to put in place those that are more friendly to the particular missions we are trying to accomplish. So I would say as we go down this road of trying to deal with these little issues that we encounter every day, let’s take mission approaches.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Great, well said. My problem is for our listening audiences just the importance this subject for our country. It’s important that we rally to make these people be successful because I think that making these people here today successful is going to be securing our country to the benefit of every citizen of our country.

So it’s a critical issue, it’s an important issue and I am just absolutely thrilled that all these individuals are willing to take time from their extraordinarily busy schedules to come and share their thoughts with our audience and on behalf of the news station as well as our companies I would like to thank all of you for being with me here today for the show. I invite our audience to join us next month

When we do a show on IPV6 our next generation internet and where we are going with that and the kinds of issues in front of us and facing us as we transition that way.

          With that I want to thank our panelists, I want to thank you all for listening to the federal executive forum on federal news radio. Thank you all very much and we’ll see you all next month.