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Meeting the Customers' Requirements
By Tracy Sharpe, DISA Corporate Communications

Yogesh Gupta, president and chief executive officer of FatWire software, moderated a discussion about how adoption of new communication technology has changed the needs and desires of the customers.

Gupta's panelists included Paige Atkins, director of the Defense Spectrum Organization; Marine Corps LtCol David McMorries, assistant signal officer (deputy G6) with the 2nd Marine Division; Chris Raney of the Space and Naval Warfare Systems (SPAWAR) Center in San Diego; Army SFC Andrew Baker, non-commissioned officer in charge of quality assurance for DISA; and Rich Williams, vice principal director of DISA's Global Information Grid Enterprise Services Engineering Directorate.

"If you think back five years ago, Facebook didn't exist, MySpace didn't exist, YouTube didn't exist," said Gupta. These new capabilities and services have changed how people access information and exchange information.

These new capabilities consume more bandwidth than ever before, and with increasing requirements for bandwidth, spectrum needs have grown rapidly over the last few years. Spectrum must be managed carefully to provide for the customers' need for information, but it must also ensure safety for all who use it.

Paige Atkins illustrated the need to manage the electromagnetic spectrum for the warfighter. Communications, radar, navigation systems, and logistics depend on spectrum access.

Atkins said that managing spectrum is challenging and critical to mission success. She listed examples, such as when U.S. Army helicopters crashed in the Middle East because of spectrum interference. A jet pilot was unexpectedly ejected from his plane and died of injuries received because of spectrum incompatibility between systems on his jet and the aircraft carrier that he was approaching for landing.

She also noted the difficulty in keeping warfighters safe in Iraq and Afghanistan because of radio signals triggering improvised explosive devices (IEDs). To prevent the IEDs from exploding, the allies jam the frequencies; but an unintended consequence of jamming those frequencies is that coalition communications ability is disrupted.

"We're forcing men and women in the field to make decisions on whether they protect themselves from an IED or have critical communications capabilities — life or death decisions in the field," Atkins said.

She explained that DSO's role is to work closely with the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Staff, the military services, the combatant commands, and other DoD agencies to make sure that service members don't have to make those decisions in the future because of spectrum. Atkins wants to ensure that DoD has full spectrum access to support U.S. and coalition partners engaged in combat with a virulent enemy — because "that's what we are all about."

LtCol David McMorries told the audience how instant messaging chat is a critical requirement for the infantry battalion today.

"All battle space disciplines: air, command and control, battle space mobility, fire support coordination, they were all conducted in chat rooms," said McMorries.

The challenges that McMorries said he faces stem from the latest technologies to reach the warfighter. The latest capabilities for the warfighter have been demonstrated in Iraq and Afghanistan, he said.

"They are the prototype requirements for the future," said McMorries, "But they don't support things that are coming out."

Chris Raney spoke about how Net-Centric Enterprise Services (NCES) products have helped his organization. As the co-lead of the Maritime Domain Awareness Data Sharing Community of Interest Pilot Technical Group, Raney proudly stated that SPAWAR is the first to share data across federal agencies as well as with international partners in a net-centric manner.

"We've been leveraging NCES to show the art of the possible, to see that the data we're publishing to the other services is actually subscribed to at the other end," Raney said.

However, after Raney touted NCES, SFC Andrew Baker shared with the audience his frustrations pertaining to information sharing.

"Interoperability is one of the key frustrations that we have," said Baker. "Being able to cross service boundaries is probably one of the key things we have issues with, and we look to DISA to help us out with that."

Baker reported having problems using different products with different military services. For example, products developed for one military service could not be used with programs developed for another military service. Baker requested that vendors try to test all their products with all the military services so that they can communicate effectively.

He also asked for consolidated tools from the vendors which would simplify systems for the users.

"You can do more if you consolidate your tools with other vendors," said Baker. "Develop them to be interoperable with other tools," he asked, noting that if there are eight or nine monitoring tools, it does nothing but congest the work.

Baker remarked that pre-positioned services enable flexibility for the warfighter. He relayed a story in which a legacy system did not fulfill the needs of a commander,; however, with the benefit of pre-positioned services, he was able to solve the problem within 15 minutes.

Rich Williams spoke of the challenges to bringing services to the edge.

"We educate our workforce … to make it simple, to make it effective, to make it not unlike what they do in their civilian life," said Williams.

He gave an example of a new product with a Web-based capability to ensure the availability of network access. When customers need to travel to a location that does not have network access, this product allows customers to schedule network availability for communication services before they reach their new location. This service would allow for flexibility by providing more access when requested.

This reliable access to the network perpetuates the desires and needs of the customer to remain connected at all times. The true challenge is to be able to have information assurance at every point.

At the end of the panel discussion, the panel members briefly reiterated their needs from the industry partners.

"How do we write the policy to share info with our coalition partners?" Raney asked rhetorically, concluding that DoD agencies need to reach out to coalition partners and share with them, rather than treat them as an afterthought.

"There is going to be a fundamental need for culture changes, which is always one of the most difficult things to take on across all elements," concluded Atkins.

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