Moderator/Host

Jim Flyzik, The Flyzik Group

Panelists

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

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

Vance Hitch, CIO, Department of Justice

Zal Azmi, CIO, FBI

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

Edward Vaccaro, Partner, Homeland Security, Federal Systems, Unisys

Glenn Cruickshank, Senior Manager, Information Management Practice, BearingPoint

Michael P Angelakis, President and Founder, Integration Technologies Group, Inc.

Good afternoon and welcome to this month’s show. On today’s show we will discuss progress made by government and industry leaders during the past year in the area of Information Sharing.

We’re talking information sharing and let’s get right into the issues. What we’d like to hear from each of the panelists; this is one year anniversary. We did this same show with our same government leaders one year ago. What we’d like to hear from each of the panelists is progress made during the past year. Let’s start with Karen Evans over at OMB. Karen, give us some ideas on what’s happened in the last year.

KAREN EVANS, OMB

Well, Jim, thank you for inviting me back, and I am pleased to say that the President has released an implementation plan for the Information Sharing environment as required by the Intelligence Reform Act. And also we’ve released guidelines out for the information sharing environment and the President has recently approved interagency recommendations that have come up to deal with an implementation of a framework for sharing information with state, local, tribal, and private sector entities, which includes the Fusion Center guidelines.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Great, I like to come back later on in the show to talk about that state, local and the sharing that’s going on. Dale Meyerrose, General your name has been all over the press in this particular issue. You’ve stepped into that role and I know recently you’ve got some empowerment. There are some big expectations for the Director of National Intelligence. Can you give us some idea of progress going on in your area?

DALE MEYERROSE, OFFICE OF THE DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE

Sure, good afternoon Jim. Again thanks for having me back as well. As you know the last year has been about establishing relationships; making sure that we have the right governance in place not only in the intelligence business, but also with our stake holders and partners across the Federal government whether it’s OMB, DOD, DHS, Department of Justice, or the FBI. We’ve put all those in place.

We have a new Director, Director McConnell, who has been on board a little over a month, who has set up a series of priorities which have built on successes of the past year; those successes have included opening up lines of communication that we have not here-to-fore had with allies, and with other parts of the Federal government.

And he has recently named me the Information Sharing Executive for the Intelligence Community. And basically what that means is that we are looking at taking Information Sharing within the Intelligence community to another level and to also ensure that we as the Intelligence community speak with one voice with other parts of government in terms of Information Sharing.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Great, thanks Dale. Ed Vaccaro over at Unisys, give us an idea of how a private sector company like Unisys positions itself and what you have been doing in the last year to help facilitate or support better information sharing.  

ED VACCARO, UNISYS

Thanks for inviting us here today. As you know we work very closely with many sectors of the Federal government, DHS, DOD, and the Intel community as well. Through our experiences there in providing services and supporting a lot of the efforts, that are going on there, we’ve taken those experiences and are beginning to work on products that help enable a lot of the activities around Information Sharing and we will be introducing as these opportunities come along.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Terrific! I think we talked last year about the fact that no one entity’s going to get this done, it’s going to take the community working together. Van Hitch, CIO over at Justice; I know Van we’ve been hearing a lot about the Justice programs over there and I see a recent award of an Index program over there. There’s a lot going on over at Justice. Can you give us some highlights of your last year?

VANCE HITCH, JUSTICE

Sure Jim. Well one thing that I feel really good about is that our programs have been going for a number of years now, so we actually have systems out there that are actually sharing real information, law enforcement information with our Information Sharing partners.

I think last year I talked about the Seattle pilot that we had going. That’s very mature now we’ve learned a lot of things from it. We’ve improved our models. We’ve expanded that to San Diego, St. Louis, Jacksonville, and in May we are going into LA and Texas with our R-DEx system, which is what we share with information consortia and Fusion Centers with. And then you mentioned N-DEx which is our national digital exchange that will be available to law enforcement no matter how small or large the city across the whole country, and we awarded that major contract just last month.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Congratulations on that and we look forward to hearing about great results coming down the road. Glenn Cruickshank over at BearingPoint, how has a company like BearingPoint positioned? What have you been doing over the last year to position and to try to facilitate better Information and Intelligence Sharing?

GLENN CRUICKSHANK, BEARINGPOINT

Thanks Jim, good to be here. BearingPoint has been working with all the agencies here on either Information Sharing or Enterprise Architecture and performance management. And what we are finding is that information sharing is really a hard problem to solve, and I think they taught us in Management 101 it’s really hard to measure, so we’ve been working on developing an Information Sharing maturity model, an assessment tool, and a series of user metrics that we can take to agencies and help them develop road maps and to assess where they are, where they can go and the types of things to measure, how well they are doing Information Sharing.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Terrific. Thanks a lot. Zal Azmi, CIO over at FBI, we heard Van talking about it at the Justice level laying out the vision and the high level programs. I guess a lot of the implementation and the actual doing falls down to the FBI. Can you give us ideas of things that you are doing over at the FBI to facilitate Information and Intelligence Sharing in the past year?

ZAL AZMI, FBI

As Van mentioned the R-DEx and N-DEx programs are both moving forward and I think it’s going to be a great success when it comes to Information Sharing. But one of the challenges we identified last year was the number of policies that we have to over come for sharing information. And I think through the R-DEx program last year we learned what information our customers need and what information we should share with them. So there are a number of lessons learned from that program.

But also working with the program manager for Information Sharing environment, we have been able to actually put a number of pilot programs together to provide greater access to the information that exists in the Federal government. I think those programs will prove to be very successful, they are pilot programs and we are hoping to get those into production within the next year.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Terrific. I know that is a priority. I know that last year we talked quite a bit on the show about trying to identify the information that actually needs to be shared. Information for different reasons can take on a whole different light depending on the context where it’s gotten. Michael Angelakis, president and founder of ITG, I know your company has done a lot in putting in place some standards and quality processes as I understand. Maybe talk about what you are doing to try to help facilitate Information Sharing and sound business processes?

MICHAEL ANGELAKIS, INTEGRATION TECHNOLOGIES GROUP

Thank you Jim and thanks for having us here. Generally speaking we feel that at the end of the day, what we all want is the ability to collect relevant useful data, to advance the data by monitoring it properly, and to have all that cost as little as possible. What we are doing in this area right now is we are looking at ISO876, it’s a standard that will allow organizations to handle those processes required to collect valid, useful, vetted data and allow it to be monitored appropriately.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Terrific. Getting some standards in place and quality processes I think is the key to everything. Dr. Carter Morris over at DHS; DHS everyone looks at as playing a major role. I know you worked for Charlie Allen over there and I did have the opportunity to hear you at the AFCEA Homeland Security conference talking about a lot of neat stuff going on. Would you share with our listening audience some of the progress that you have made over the last year over at DHS?

DR. CARTER MORRIS, DHS

Thank you, Jim. Thanks for inviting me back again to comment about some of the things that we have been doing. I think one of the major things that we’ve done from a governance view within DHS, the Secretary on the first of February signed a memo for “DHS Policy for Internal Information Exchange and Sharing”, what we call OneDHS; making sure we started at home first among the various components at DHS so that we can share. We have established a governance board to oversee this; we have established a coordinating council at the working level with representatives of more than 20 organizations just to focus on information sharing both internally and with external customers.

From an operational point of view, we have spent a lot of effort over the last year really reaching out to the States and Locals and private sectors. We’ve deployed DHS people to the Fusion Centers to be the focus on that. We started this year and we will complete that over the next couple of years in getting that deployment.

We’ve rolled out a pilot program and successfully tested it, what we call the Homeland Security Information Network for Intelligence, where we tie the people in my office, intelligence and analysis directly into analysts at the Fusion Center. We had a conference where we brought together the federal analysts and the state analysts. We’ve rolled out a secret network, a domestic secret network, to state and locals in the field and we have brought state and local people with appropriate clearances on to that network so that they can share in that secret domain. So there are an awful lot of activities over the last year that we have been working on.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

That’s great to hear; a lot of progress since we were together a year ago. Let’s talk then about what are some of the constraints or the barriers and the things that we need to overcome to keep the momentum going to make things happen. We read in the papers all the time about data mining and privacy issues and who is doing what, and debates over all the various things such as the Patriot Act and so forth, so we understand some of those constraints. But in your day to day job, when you are trying to make progress, what are some of these constraints or barriers that you are trying to overcome to keep the momentum going?

Let’s start with Van Hitch over at Justice. What do you think are some of the, when you get to work the things that you face that get in the way, the challenges that you need to overcome to keep moving forward?

VANCE HITCH, JUSTICE

Well I think the biggest challenge that I see is the scale of what we are trying to do. Basically there are 20,000 law enforcement organizations across the country, there’s over 200,000 law enforcement officers. My ideal of what we are trying to accomplish is really to share appropriately with all of them. And we have a very complex department internally; we have 30 components and so forth. And then the US government is a very complex organization, so we are dealing in an environment that is very complex and it takes a lot of cross governmental coordination with state and local as well as federal. I think that’s the biggest thing. We’ve made a lot of progress in that Information Sharing environment that people have talked about already. I think it’s been a big help in terms of providing a forum and to bring issues to bear and to help get them resolved.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Karen, you with the e-Gov program, you face coordination across the government every day, trying to get the government to function as a government enterprise. What are some of the constraints or barriers in moving forward with information sharing across government agencies?

KAREN EVANS, OMB

Well I would probably distill this into a very simple concept and that is trust. There has to be a trust relationship across the board. Van has described the complexities associated with this. We can say it’s policy and I agree we are very concerned about privacy, civil liberties and security as we go forward with this. But it really is trust that the services are going to be there for when the agency needs to do its mission.

And so we are asking for agencies to put trust in to other agencies to deliver services better than you can do it yourself in their areas of expertise. That is a change in the model because agencies are used to doing it and providing for themselves; and so when you get down to all of this they have to believe that the services are going to be there and that they are going to be reliable so that they can carry out the mission that the American people are expecting them to do.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Well said, Karen. I think that trust factor is one that becomes so important. I’m sure it does when you are looking at the Intelligence community where law enforcement and working with that and so forth where we talk about the trust issue. What do you think Carter Morris in terms of constraints, barriers, things you are trying to overcome to keep the momentum going at DHS?

DR. CARTER MORRIS, DHS

I think that the real challenge that I see is moving from the theoretical to the real implementation and operation. You mentioned the issue about identifying what information needs to be moved to whom, for what purpose. I think we are still struggling with that. Understanding what it is we are trying to accomplish in this Information Sharing world.

When it comes to implementation, you don’t solve the general problem. You can set some bases, but then you’ve got to start working those real details. Sometimes working in the general domain is much more difficult than working in the real one. Once you understand what the problems are then you can start attacking them. I think that’s where we are trying to put some of our real energy, is starting to look at what the real issues are, what the real problems are and let’s see if we can solve them.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Dale Meyerrose, I imagine you may have bumped into a constraint or two along the way in terms of trying to get your programs off and running, but you seem to have been gaining a lot of momentum recently. What are some of the big challenges and constraints you face every day trying to get your programs moving forward?

DALE MEYERROSE, OFFICE OF THE DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE

Well the momentum that we’ve managed to get is directly attributable to the professionals that work in the Intelligence business and the professionals that we work with across the US government. And so we have been able to make a lot of progress.

The crux, which said a different way from some of my colleagues said a few moments ago, is that you are talking about autonomy versus authorities in many cases. How that affects your decision making and culture.

What I mean by that is that there are so many linkages and interdependencies, not only within the Intelligence community but also with our stakeholders and partners; and so when we make decisions about either systems or process or organization, we have to take into account those partners and stakeholders and users, if you will, because what we produce is not for ourselves, but for them as well.

So when I say give up autonomy I mean that you take other folks’ view into account before you make a decision. That doesn’t necessarily mean that you give up authority and I think in the old way of thinking authorities and autonomy were so closely linked that organizations had a hard time of making that distinction. But giving up autonomy is key to collectively making us better for sharing information.  

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Well said Dale. Zal, how about over at the FBI, since you’ve done a lot of the implementation issues around it and everybody looks at the FBI as a key player when it comes to information and intelligence sharing especially in law enforcement. What are some of the bigger constraints or constraints you bump into each day, Zal?

ZAL AZMI, FBI

I think my colleagues covered the strategic view in terms of trust and complexity of the environment that we are dealing with. But more on a tactical base, I will say that the FBI is committed to providing federal, state, local, tribal and foreign partners with access to terrorism information as required by the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004.

We are also committed to providing agencies having national security responsibilities access to terrorism, foreign intelligence and counterterrorism intelligence information as required by the US Patriot Act and of course procedures set by the Attorney General. The basic concept is how to get that data and get it out to our partners, because we are dealing with 25 – 30 year old legacy data. So when it comes to implementation, our challenges with getting the legacy data that we already have out as far as classification goes and making that available to our partners. It goes back to what Dr. Morris said that the implementation is the most difficult part of this process.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Michael, from your perspective at ITG what do you see as challenges or barriers your company is trying to overcome to move forward in this space and help the government put in place sound processes?

MICHAEL ANGELAKIS, INTEGRATION TECHNOLOGIES GROUP

I think I would echo virtually all of the statements made earlier. I think there are serious concerns with respect to privacy, with respect to security. I think that we would be well served to have standards in place to ensure that the data, the data administrators maintain their fiduciary responsibility for the data while at the same time, serve the national interest.

We’ve been working in a number of areas with respect to this effort. We just finished our certification in ISO 3000 and ITO and there’s one particular area within these standards, problem management that focuses on what do you do with the data once you have it.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Thank you sir and I want to hear from the other two private sector panelists too. But we need to take a break.

Break.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Welcome back. I’m here today talking Information Sharing. When we left we were talking about constraints and we are talking about some of the barriers that still need to be overcome to keep the momentum, keep programs moving forward.

And we heard from some of our panelists but we didn’t have chance to hear from our industry guests from BearingPoint and Unisys. Glenn, how about from your perspective? What do you see as some of the barriers or constraints that need to be overcome to keep some momentum going here?

GLENN CRUICKSHANK, BEARINGPOINT

One of the things that the community’s done a real good job in the last 50 years building secure systems to prevent access to data. Now we are expected to do a 180 on that and do that in a very short period of time. And that’s really difficult and that’s taking some time.

So the systems themselves are going to have to change to do that. Again, there’s a new cultural change we talked about and how we measure that culture has to be changed in terms measuring how much information is going to be produced and how much information is going to be shared. I think that how you look at the culture and how people measure is going to be important in the future.  

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Yes, that culture term, I’d say this is our 16^th radio show and I think that culture term has made its way into just about every show when you are talking about coordination of things and changing government and changing organization structures. Ed Vaccaro over at Unisys, what do you see as some of key constraints or barriers that need to be overcome to keep the momentum going here?

ED VACCARO, UNISYS

Well we’ve talked a lot about culture, but I’m starting to see that cultural shifts are occurring. As those of us that are faced with some of the implementation issues, as we start moving in to the actual deployment of some of the tactics and policies that we are talking about here.

What we are seeing now is that we need to move the protection of the information closer to the information itself, so that we can get more granularities and more flexibility. So that as we start thinking about how we split the sharing and assign who gets what you have more control over it and you are less concerned about who has access to a network or a facility and really you are now focused on the information and the pieces of it. So that’s really where we have spent an awful lot of time in our R&D to figure out what kind of technologies or products along with our services to help enable all this stuff.  

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

It sounds like we need industry to step up. The challenges are there we need some best practices. Talking about best practices we were talking during the commercial here, Karen and Dale Meyerrose and myself; when we talk about this next subject, sharing information at the state and local and private sectors, are there some real examples that you are aware of? Are there examples in the federal government or examples sharing with state and local entities? We read all the time about 80% of the critical infrastructure in our national security infrastructure and our country is owned an operated by the private sector so there is an obvious need for sharing critical information with that. So as we talk through this issue, the question is going to be around the issue of how are we coordinating with the state and local governments and the private sector?

In my mind there’s a threat against a shopping mall somewhere and the information comes in, how does the information go two different ways, how does that information get out and back and so forth?

So think about this as a two part question, firstly, what are we doing to improve state and local private sector and secondly are there some examples that you could point to of things going on that you think are real good starts or best practices Let’s start with Carter Morris. Carter I know at DHS you’ve been looking at this issue quite a bit over the past several years, can you give us some thoughts or insights as to how we are doing?

DR. CARTER MORRIS, DHS

I had an opportunity recently to speak to the national Fusion Center conference – the first one that we’ve had -- where we brought people from the state Fusion Centers together with us and the Department of Justice and the DNI’s office.

One of the things I pointed out there is the issue that DHS has language which basically says share relevant and appropriate information to the appropriate state and locals, along with assessments of the credibility of that information. So in those words I think there is the real key to what we are trying to do. And I think the focus over the last year has clearly been on the state and local Fusion Centers and making them an integral part of the sharing mechanisms between the Federal government into the states and then down through the localities.

So right now we are very much working on a plan to achieve that.  I think I have mentioned a couple of things that we had done, the conferences, our SDU of network of sharing information in the analytical domain, our pushing of the secret level HSDN system out to the state and locals and bringing them on to that; all focused in making a collaborative partnership between the federal government and the state and local entities in this area of homeland security, terrorism and therefore Information Sharing to support that.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Great, thanks. Zal, at the FBI, now how do you get information up and down through the various levels of government and how does information come to you from  the local level and how do you get information down to your local counterparts, the state and local level and if need be the private sector? Can you comment on that, can you talk about things you know that are going on?

ZAL AZMI, FBI

Actually at the heart of this information sharing for the FBI is the Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTF). We have about 100 Joint Terrorism Task Forces throughout the country. That’s the central coordination for a lot of the information that we are dealing with. Then on the law enforcement side for Information Sharing, obviously we have law enforcement online that is a sensitive, but unclassified network that has been in existence for many years, and that’s where we actually collaborate with our law enforcement partners.

There are about 56 special interest groups that are basically are part of a collaboration environment on issues and activities that are happening. I would also say that the FBI has deployed close to 100 FBI employees to the Fusion Centers and all of these Fusion Centers actually have a live connection to the FBI headquarters network; so actual information is being shared in those Fusion Centers with the FBI agents at headquarters.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Van at the Department of Justice a number of your programs seem to be taking off. Do you have some examples of things that are actually happening in working with the state and locals?

VANCE HITCH, JUSTICE

Yes, I think that’s one of the most gratifying things, is actually seeing how the information being shared turns into real law enforcement action and finding the bad guys.

This can be terrorism kind of stuff or it can also be regular law enforcement actions. In the first pilot that we did out in the Seattle area, it’s been in place now for over two years, it is wonderful to hear the success stories for just everyday law enforcement. We are cracking drug cases that we have never cracked before.

A story that made the papers here last summer was with the Jewish Federation. There was a shooting at the Jewish Federation with associated bomb threats and so forth. That was resolved in about 15 minutes because of the new features of the information sharing that were available between all of the law enforcement components within the Seattle area as well as the Justice Department.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Love to hear those stories of the good guys. Another one for the good guys! Dale, how about at the DNI level? Lots of change happening there, but do you have some examples maybe, how do you have some outreach to state and local counterparts where a lot of local information intelligence gathering takes place?

DALE MEYERROSE, OFFICE OF THE DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE

The thing to bear in mind is that we in the intelligence business do not deal directly with the state and local level, but we do that through our partners whether it is the Department of Homeland Security or the Justice Department, whether it’s working in the policy issues or program manager for Information Sharing.

In that regard we’ve taken about three major efforts. One is organizational. Within the National Counterterrorism Center, we’ve in fact established a fusion group which is composed of members of the various communities, which specifically look at intelligence information that either the Department of Homeland Security or Justice needs to get out to folks, so that physical fusion group is part of the National Counterterrorism Center is a big player.

Secondly we have looked at our systems and how we interface those systems with folks. For instance last summer, we in the intelligence community provided the construct for the pandemic planning mechanisms for the government portals at unclassified, secret and top secret levels. And what that demonstrates is how we have provided interface of our systems such as Intelink so that the transparency works and we can push information quickly.

And then last area in which we have worked very, very hard is what we call the terror line issues; that is making intelligence packages so that it can be shared with folks. We have the terror line between sources and methods and the information itself so that things can be put out at the lowest classification possible.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

We’ve heard a lot about that. Good to hear a lot of progress going on. Karen with the e-Gov initiatives I guess you have this issue across the board. You’ve got all of all programs, the issue of what we do about sharing with other levels of government and working with the NASCIO group. Can you give us some ideas of some progress bring made or some examples of programs you think we can point to as best practices in terms of progress?

KAREN EVANS, OMB

Well there’s one effort or one strategy that I would really like to highlight here as we are talking about information sharing and the intelligence role in getting real time information, and this goes back to a point that Carter made earlier. It’s one thing, we have the Presidential guidelines and think of those as all of the business rules that the agencies and state and local government all agree that they are going to follow; but it’s another thing to actually have demonstrated success or show a system or show the technology that can enable legacy data and share it in real time.

The DOD strategy is really implementing if you get down to the simplest package of this, is the service oriented architecture (SOA). They have built the service. And they have followed the strategy of getting it implemented in 9 months or less, and you have to know the business, but they actually have four of these operating in real time right now.

One of them is dealing with maritime data. So they have a service out there and DOD, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Transportation are hooked up, live, real time and they know exactly where ships and boats and all these other things are, right exactly where they are real time and everybody’s pulling up the same data, looking at the same data and they implemented this in less than 9 months and less than a million dollars, of course OMB always loves the less than a million dollar aspect. But it’s a very powerful example.

So it takes things out of the theoretical and puts them into real life and they can show, this is what we have done, here’s the tool kit and they’ve documented everything as they went forward so that they can share it with the other agencies and enable legacy data to get it out so that people can share it.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

That sounds terrific. You know when I hear these stories I feel like I guess we are trying with this radio show to do this, but there needs to be a way to get this flow of information out to the general public so that they have an idea of the things that the government is doing, because unfortunately they rarely read about this in the local newspapers, there’s a focus on more of the negative stories that come out.

Over in the private sector, Ed, over at Unisys can you site some things that you’ve seen or perhaps that Unisys has helped work on where progress has really been made? I know Unisys does a lot in the financial community, are there places where you are sharing information with state and local counterparts or private sector entities?

ED VACCARO, UNISYS

Well we are doing a lot right now for instance with the Transportation Security Administration. We’re working with applications with the private sector in shippers with for instance on the shipper systems. That will allow private shippers to register themselves with the Transportation Security Administration to help improve the flow of goods through the system so that they can get prechecked and not have to go through rigorous paper work and improve the overall flow of commodities. That’s one of the things we are working on most recently as a matter of fact and that went on line in December.   

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

How about over at BearingPoint Glenn, do you have some examples of things that you are doing or some examples of programs that are actually moving forward in this area?

GLENN CRUICKSHANK, BEARINGPOINT

Sure Jim, this follows on from what Karen was talking about. We’ve been helping for instance to develop the National Information Exchange Model to do that data standards and what we’ve done as part of the support on that is use people from the commercial part of BearingPoint who have worked on the news media standards and say well that industry knows how to change that information, they’ve developed those standards over time. Maybe we could learn something from the commercial world so we’ve been developing joint teams of commercial public service practice people who are working together to develop those standard practices.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Michael, how about over at ITG, do you have some examples or things you can point to where you’ve seen progress being made?

MICHAEL ANGELAKIS, INTEGRATION TECHNOLOGIES GROUP

Well of course the benefits of Information Sharing are not limited to counter terrorism projects. Information sharing can play a very important role in making the government citizen centric. A good example of that is in medical information systems; how we can track medical information from prenatal care to the child bearing process as children grow up, they go to college, they become adults.  By being able to cross reference the data and from a variety of view points along the history of the individual we can add tremendous value to the data. We’ve been working in this area and we are working with respect to the architecture and methodology for integrating data from different sources; setting data among applications, mapping data in different structures and resolving conflicts between models.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

I like the Health IT analogy too because I think that in fact sets up, we are getting ready to do a radio show on Health IT two shows from now because there seems to be so much in that space right now where IT can play such a major role. I know every time one of us goes to a doctor and fills that same form out again and again and again and again, you think about efficiencies in the administrative process around Health IT. A question before we go to our next break for the government guests here and it’s not a loaded question; it’s just a clarification question. The agencies’ roles, which sometimes I think the public and industry is trying to figure out; who does what kind of thing? Maybe we can start with Carter, over at DHS. What do you see the DHS role in the information and intelligence sharing of space? What do you see Charlie Allen, yourself, what are you chartered to do there, your role?

DR. CARTER MORRIS, DHS

Well I think the key thing as I said was part of the creation of the Department of Homeland Security was Information Sharing and we go back to the Homeland Security Act and that is prominent in that act. I think the key, if I have a focus that I believe we are doing, is one: we are making sure that the information that DHS has from its operational and regulatory missions flows to the people who can use that information across the community; and the second one is what I call the huge responsibility that we have in the sharing of information with the state and local and private sector. So within our domain, that is really the thing that is driving us.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

 That’s great. Well Dale,  DHS was the new guy on the block, but DNI came in after DHS, so what do you see as your key role, what is your one major objective from the DNI perspective that you think you need to get done?

DALE MEYERROSE, OFFICE OF THE DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE

Well, our new Director O’Connell has made it very clear that the watch word that he wants us known by is collaboration. And collaboration connotes a more thorough interaction if you will. It’s a more sophisticated element of Information Sharing. In fact he uses the phrase ‘responsibility to provide’ as a means of talking about stewardship and information and the element of Information Sharing.

I think it is important to realize that we have two responsibilities: one is the quality of information code intelligence product that is available to our stakeholders and users; and the other is the business of producing that product. And one is affecting us and the other is efficiency which is both responsibilities to the Director of National Intelligence under the Intelligence Reform Act.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Karen, we know the obvious responsibilities of the Executive Office of the President (EOP), management, oversight and policy and so forth. In terms of the Information Sharing initiative, do you see it as more of an oversight to make sure it gets done or an active involvement? Can you give us a better idea of your role? Or how do you see you role in this particular subject?

KAREN EVANS, OMB

Well Ambassador McNamara might think I’m too involved in it. It is an oversight piece because as you have mentioned a couple of times, what we need to do is make sure that everything the agencies are doing, whether they know it today or not, aligns with the potential that they can share the information when they need to do it.

So we have to make sure that all their investments are aligned and that their strategies, their Enterprise Architecture, all those types of activities are aligned. And then also, from Administration’s perspective, (there) is securing the information; that all the agencies are collecting and then insuring the privacy associated with that. So it is really oversight like you said, but when you get down to it, it’s a lot of individual looking at several activities that the agencies are doing and  to make sure they are aligned to meet that goal.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Well you know they say that getting more information than you actually need is better than getting no information, so I guess that being over involved in something  is better than not being involved at all. So I think it’s a good sign. Van and Zal over at Justice and FBI what do you see your roles there? The obvious one, being the lead law enforcement agencies, Van can you say something to the subject of roles of the DoJ?               

VANCE HITCH, JUSTICE

I think DoJ has long played the leadership role in law enforcement and our Information Sharing strategy would apply to law enforcement whether there was a terrorism element or not that happened and the emphasis it received there especially after 9/11. But certainly the new mission of terrorism prevention, which in the Department of Justice is primarily executed through the FBI, it adds to that. So the systems we are building and the approach we have to Information Sharing is built on those two pillars. Obviously we work very closely with our Federal partners in executing that counterterrorism mission.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Zal, can you add to Van’s comments, perhaps?

ZAL AZMI, FBI

Yes, actually the FBI has a dual mission, law enforcement and domestic intelligence. In December of 2004, Director Muller unveiled FBI’s national Information Sharing strategy.

And since then, as Karen said, every investment that we have made in new technology has been based on Information Sharing to make sure that we are addressing that. For us with the creation of the National Security Branch, we have to share information with out intelligence counterparts, all 16 agencies that report to the intelligence community, but also with our law enforcement counterparts which are basically for the law enforcement and information sharing program that Van Hitch is chairing. So we are supporting both environments and both systems, including enterprise architecture actually it’s a structure to support both environments.          

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

We have haven’t had a chance to talk about Enterprise Architectures and how well they drive some of this. When we come back we are going to hear from all of our panelists on some final thoughts and visions on where this is all going and some things that you think we should be looking forward to in the future.

Break

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

I’m going to ask each of our panelists to give their thoughts on this future for our country. Let’s start with Dr. Carter Morris, give us your thoughts for the future on information and intelligence sharing.

DR. CARTER MORRIS, DHS

I think last year when I was here I said I was optimistic about Information Sharing and I’ve seen nothing to dissuade me from that. I continue to be very optimistic about where we are and how we are proceeding and I really do believe that people get the information they need today.

I think there are things we can do to improve it and challenges. One of the challenges that I’ve spoken about already is that we need to build that collaborative trust environment with state and locals and private sector in the Federal government. I don’t think we are quite there across the barrier yet, I think we still need to work on that.

I think that as we build better tools and get access to more information there are some challenges that we continue to run into, that are going to be the real issues that have to be handled; and one is the private civil liberties issue and how do we consent to look at data, handle data, move data, and protect data. And I am in agreement with that. And as the information gets more available and the tools get better, I think we’ll become more cognizant of that.

And then my classic challenge that I have and we all have in the community: is how do we share information from the operation community to the non-operation community? That’s where the real barriers are. People who have to have that information to do their job are very conscious about who they share it to because it may compromise the ability to do their job. And we’ve got learn how to deal with that.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Thanks Carter. Michael your thoughts about the future and where we are going with all this.

MICHAEL ANGELAKIS, INTEGRATION TECHNOLOGIES GROUP

Well we are the people who make the tools, or we try to make the tools along with the rest of the private sector. We are going to be working this year on a new set of tools for global management. Global management is an organization’s ability to recognize multiple incidents as having a common thread. So we are developing software that can scan databases and look to connect the dots if you will and identify potential threats.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Thank you and thank you for being here. Zal, connect the dots seems to have an FBI ring to it. What are your thoughts about the future of this whole program?

ZAL AZMI, FBI

I think the future is bright. We have made great progress in the last year. The infrastructure is almost there, the policies and standards are being developed thanks to the OMB, DNI and DoJ.

I think we next need to concentrate on preparing the data for sharing. I think one of the points that my colleagues made was we need to find out what we have, what we want to share and who we want to share it with. I think that’s the key right there. We have to really build the collaborative environment where we can communicate with our partners directly and find out exactly what information they need, in what form they need it and circulate that information.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Glenn, your thoughts about where this is all going in the future.

GLENN CRUICKSHANK, BEARINGPOINT

BearingPoint’s view here today is that this is going to take a balanced approach to solve the problem. It’s going to take a blend of governance, it’s going to take standards, it’s going to take people, it’s going to take process, and it’s going to take technology and all of those things working together. And it’s going to probably also going to take (working with) the commercial world that’s been trying to solve the problem for many, many years. That whole blend is going to be a key to the success.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Van, what is your view for the future here and where this is all going?

VANCE HITCH, JUSTICE

Well we mentioned the two main missions of the Department of Justice are law enforcement and counterterrorism. And I think through these Information Sharing efforts, which I help coordinate, I really do see the opportunity to transform the way law enforcement’s done in the United States. And through that being able to help connect the dots to help us prevent terrorist attacks and just intelligence-based policing to help catch the bad guys, whatever they are doing, whether it is drugs or terrorism.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

I think there’s a sense of things getting better and we have to caution against a sense of complacency and not letting our guard down again. Ed Vaccaro, you play a role with DHS and are, a partner with a Homeland Security practice here for the Federal systems. What’s your view of where this is all going for the future?

ED VACCARO, UNISYS

We at Unisys have a unique opportunity to watch all this unfold since we’ve been around since the beginning, since Homeland Security was conceived. We’ve been working alongside the Department as a partner and I think industry in general has the ability now to continue that partnership, lend advice and experience and enable what is now going from policy and concept to actual reality to make it happen and to take these capabilities and make them easier to implement and easier to realize.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Dale Meyerrose, CIO at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Dale some thoughts about the future here, some thoughts about where this is all going and what it may mean to the country.

DALE MEYERROSE, OFFICE OF THE DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE

I think it’s important to bear in mind that all problems are people problems. And when you are talking about Information Sharing, collaboration that is what we are talking about, we are talking about people problems. And relevance is a continually changing paradigm in solving those issues. It’s like this journey that we continually solve those kinds of issues with changing references and frames of references.

We’ve got a four pronged attack in which we are trying to recruit, train and retain the right intellectual capital to solve the nation’s problems from the intelligence community. We are going to focus on role-based identity, data structures and certification and accreditation of systems as means of working at the very foundations of Information Sharing to carry out our responsibilities.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Thanks so much. Karen Evans, we have several minutes left. Karen can you give us your vision of where you see this going down the road, the future for all of this?

KAREN EVANS, OMB

Well, I would like to encourage your listeners if you haven’t had an opportunity to read the Information Sharing Environment Implementation plan. Because we have outlined a very aggressive schedule out there, with very specific milestones, functionality, types of services, types of things that we would like to accomplish.

And I would like to come back a year from now and tell you that we have accomplished all the milestones that we have outlined, that the agencies have signed off for on this plan, that we said we would do in this next year, which would get us to all of the activities, all of the things that my colleagues have talked about today.

But it is going to take people that are trained, it is going to take tools in that environment and it is going to take knowing where the information is. So we have a plan, the agency signed on to the plan, the President has accepted that plan, and now we need to make that plan a reality.  

I am really looking forward to that. We have a lot more work that needs to be done, because I don’t know that any of us will ever sit back, at least in my tenure, and say, “Gosh, we have completed everything and so we can close up shop and go home.” This is a job that will be never ending and we need to do it because the American people are depending on us to do a good job in this area.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

I think that’s well said Karen and I think you’ve implied a challenge there, a challenge for the community, the listening community that’s out there listening today. That challenge is that we as a community need to find ways to band together and work these issues.

Basically what I have heard today and the other shows that we’ve done I’m convinced that the key things are leadership, and courage to take risk and courage to make change and courage to challenge some traditional ways of doing things, to move forward.

In addition to that leadership, we need tools and quality processes to be in place. And what I am hearing today from our industry counterparts is that they are putting place those tools and quality process and I know based on hearing our government panelists here that we have leaders sitting at the table here that are taking those risks, and are stepping up, and are moving our country forward.

I want to thank everybody for taking time from their busy schedules to get this message out. It’s an important message. I think it was well said. This is something where we need to keep the momentum, we need to keep the momentum strong because it’s important for the security of our country, it’s important for the competitiveness of our country, and it’s important to those who come behind us down the road.

So thank you all.