Common intelligence community cloud to go live in March, says Clapper

Data users in the intelligence community will have access to a common desktop and common cloud-based network starting in March, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said Oct. 9 in a keynote address to the GEOINT 2012 Symposium in Orlando, Fla..

It’s the first tangible result from an initiative ordered by Clapper in 2011 to integrate IT across the intelligence community, focusing on building a single cloud-based enterprise system.

Agencies are working together on the effort, with the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency taking the lead on building a common desktop, and the CIA and National Security Agency leading the cloud effort.

“We have no choice. We have to move in this direction,” said Al Tarasiuk, the DNI’s CIO.

Past integration efforts foundered on cultural resistance, he said, adding that this occurred at a time when budgets were going up. Now they’re going down, and not integrating will hurt the intelligence community’s ability to perform its mission, he told attendees at GEOINT 2012.

Along with the live cloud-based capability comes an applications mall that would allow agencies to set up their own app stores around a common standard, he said.