Acting DISA Director: It's about the connected enterprise, not the 'Hooah'

There’s a world beyond the Army, and LandWarNet Wednesday morning keynote speaker Rear Adm. Elizabeth Hight was in Fort Lauderdale to remind the Army’s Signal Regiment that a true, connected enterprise can be greater than the sum of its parts, but only if its parts participate.

“It’s easy to get caught up in the ‘Hooah!,’” said Hight, director of the Defense Information Systems Agency. “It’s easy to get caught up in Army. Here’s the challenge, regardless of uniform. How do we optimize for all the services, and come together to achieve a national goal?”

The answer, according to the Navy admiral, is the enterprise.

“Our information-sharing enterprise is not about control, it is about partnership,” said Hight, pointing out the successful prosecution of war must involve all the services in one way or another. “We are in the midst of learning how to yield national power in a way we’ve never done before, specifically stability operations.

“As a result we need to optimize for the unknown. It is [about] understanding how to move and share information. It is not just connecting with people, but helping them with the ability to make a decision,” she continued.

The key is getting out of every individual’s comfort zone, and solving the joint issues from both a technology and sociological standpoints. It’s about “getting to yes,” as Hight put it.

“If I have to talk to the Marine Corps while they’re still in the naval environment — before they embark — how do I do that? It’s more than having a voice on the other end of the phone; it’s about sharing,” she explained.

The LandWarNet concept is a good one, Hight said, but has to be part of a much larger enterprise.

“You have to be worried about the consumer of information. If you’re just worried about development of an FCS [Future Combat System] capability for the Army, then shame on you. You should be worried about how FCS can work with information sources from many different sensors regardless of what service fielded the sensor,” she said. “It’s about consuming the information from an FCS standpoint, not about how you develop the sources of that information. What I’m talking about is thinking about something that is much larger than ourselves.”

And it’s not just about sharing data. A true enterprise would also save an enormous amount of money that could go to more useful purposes. That’s one of the ideas behind the joint basing concept.

“What would happen if we had a common transport layer and had a joint e-mail address?” she asked, specifically referring to the separate Navy, Marine Corps and Joint Forces Command networks in Norfolk. “What would happen if we had enterprise e-mail?

“These ideas optimize the enterprise.”