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Home > Employment > Working at MITRE > Trends and Highlights > | ||||||||||||||||
A Well-Connected Workforce
It's been said that the key to success is good connections. The same adage applies, in a slightly different sense, at MITRE. Since 1998, Sheila Hansen has traveled to 13 countries as an information systems engineer with the Center for Air Force Command and Control Systems (CAFC2S). Last year, Malcolm Airst logged about 150,000 air miles as a chief engineer with the Washington Command, Control, and Communications (WC3) Center. And Steve Hofmann, a lead engineer with the Center for Integrated Intelligence Systems (CIIS), has been "home" only 45 days this year and rarely spends more than one night in the same place. But not everyone at MITRE is a globetrotter who needs to communicate with corporate headquarters across thousands of miles. After her daughter was born last March, Lois Yu of WC3 started combining telecommuting with days in the office. When telecommuting, she uses the telephone and MeetingPlace to stay in touch with workmates both at her site and elsewhere. "For many work situations, whether I am in the office or at home, it's the same to the person to whom I'm talking," says Yu. Whether you are traveling on business, working from one of MITRE's 65 site locations, or telecommuting from home, a variety of communications tools are available to you. Good Connections One of the most common methods for connecting to the MITRE network from a remote location is dial-up. To access the MITRE network via a dial-up modem, you must have a SecurID card or token, which can be obtained from the SecurID Administration in Bedford. "Don't lose or forget your SecurID card," jokes Linda Boan. "If it's gone, you're dead in the water." A lead simulation modeling engineer with the Center for Advanced Aviation System Development (CAASD), she uses dial-up to run an airspace modeling program when working from home 30 miles west of the Washington campus. In addition to dial-up, VPN (Virtual Private Network) 3000 software allows you to establish a secure connection from a laptop or home computer through an Internet Service Provider (ISP) or a sponsor's network. "You can use VPN 3000 to tunnel into the MITRE network from anywhere in the world," says Airst, who works out of San Diego but frequently travels to Taiwan. For employees at sponsor locations who cannot use VPN 3000, MITRE provides VTCP/Secure as an alternate VPN service. The Communications Backbone The backbone of MITRE communications is its intranet—the MITRE Information Infrastructure, or MII. "We'd be dead without the MII," says Ed Palo, chief engineer of CAFC2S. "It provides the foundation for so much information sharing at MITRE. That is critical to our success and fundamental to our future." Currently in pilot, the eMII is giving mobile workers richer access to internal MITRE resources. "The beauty of eMII is that it allows you to access some MITRE resources from a sponsor location, an Internet kiosk, or even from your kid's computer," says Joe Sain of Information Systems, Infrastructure, and Services (ISIS), who is spearheading the pilot. "You don't need a VPN product or direct connection to the MITRE network. All you need is your userID, SecurID card, and PIN." The pilot has become an instant success. "For people like myself who work in SCIFs [Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities] where we are not allowed to have our laptops, providing access to tools like Time Reporting System, the MII phonebook, and Outgoing Visit Request System is truly of great value," says Carl Prantl of WC3. "I no longer have to wait until I get home in the evenings to hook up my laptop and dial in just to record my hours." Going Wireless If you work in the Center for Enterprise Modernization (CEM), you may have already been introduced to wireless technology. CEM staff are often co-located in offices at the Internal Revenue Service, Treasury, Coast Guard, Homeland Security, or other government agencies, where dial-up, VPN, and even VTCP access are not options.
So, about five years ago, CEM started equipping users with wireless modems. Last year CEM upgraded to Verizon wireless modem Aircards, which enable staff to use their VPN 3000 software to access the MITRE network securely. CEM recently invited other MITRE employees to participate in a pre-launch trial of a new Verizon wireless service that provides DSL (dedicated service line)-speed service. Nicole Elliott, CEM's communications manager, describes the growing trend of wireless at MITRE as "a grass-roots initiative, with MITRE's centers leading the way in testing and deploying these new technologies." Wireless access, Airst says, "could save me hours, as opposed to using a low-speed dial-up modem from Taiwan." Wireless is most helpful for MITRE travelers, when they're in a different location every night. Hofmann says wireless is a necessity for him. He had to learn the hard way that most hotels don't have broadband. "Even if a hotel has dial-up, the switching equipment is very slow," he says. On the Road Again If you travel frequently and want to read your email without having to tote your laptop, a PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) is the best solution for storing and retrieving information. Dave Poutre, a site leader with CAFC2S in Omaha, Nebraska, provides his staff with PocketPCs equipped with modem cards so they can access the network, read email from the road, and even fill in their timecards. "It makes more sense than lugging your laptop everywhere just to get your email," he says. Many MITRE mobile workers swear by "memory sticks," small data storage devices you plug into a laptop. Memory sticks offer up to 10 times the storage capacity of a 3.5-inch diskette. In the field, memory sticks can store pictures, sound, and other data. "With memory sticks, we've enabled teams to share large and complex documents, despite the lack of a stable network or email infrastructure," says CAASD's Kim Warren. She also uses MeetingPlace (to schedule audio conferences), cellular modems, and the NetMeeting PC collaborative tool to connect her team of "govies." Road Warriors Unlimited "We need a corporately supported "Road Warriors" suite of tools," says Elliott, referring to the Mel Gibson movie character adopted by the digiterati as their role model in the dot-com days. Doug Phair, the Center for Information and Technology's (CI&T) technology evangelist, is excited about the prospects for deploying new products and technologies for MITRE's Road Warriors. "There are a lot of ideas percolating," he says. —by Jim Chido
Page last updated: December 11, 2002 | Top of page |
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