"We do nothing by ourselves," stated Information Sharing Executive Debra Filippi, of the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Networks & Information Integration, or OASD/NII. She referred to the many-faceted dimensions of information sharing across multiple agencies, partners, coalitions, and international organizations. Multinational operations are the norm today in combat, stability operations, or crisis intervention.

At the Sixth Biennial Multinational Operations Conference, held May 13-14, 2008, at MITRE's McLean, Va. office, this theme was shared by numerous speakers on the front line of the military information transformation. Presenters from the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), the military services, NATO, and MITRE emphasized that not only must information be integrated to be effective, but a culture of trust must be established for it to be shared. The conference, sponsored by the OASD and MITRE, was attended by representatives from more than 25 international organizations. Chuck Sanders, MITRE's director of Multinational Program Integration, organized the event and gave an introduction.

Ray Haller, MITRE senior vice president and director of our Department of Defense Federally Funded Research and Development Center, provided a preview of the first day's topics as he stated that, "the need for multinational operations has never been greater."

He said that the challenge of information sharing in our global environment is complex, involving the need for a great deal of trust among the participants. Balancing the pendulum of sharing versus trust is not easy and doesn't follow set rules. But by defining our trust spheres and sharing models we can respond to future operations that will require collaboration with many partners. These operations may be not just about combat or stability but may involve crisis response and humanitarian missions. He added that technology advancements have allowed greater collaboration on a global scale, but it is imperative that we work toward future improvements in policies, networking and cultural understanding.

Defeating Enemies Who Lurk "All Over the Network"

To set the stage, Filippi reviewed recent policy directives and referred to the Information Sharing Strategy from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence as a document that will outline the future environment for our defense forces.

Since September 11, 2001, the President, the Congress, independent commissions, and think tanks have placed greater emphasis on transforming the Intelligence Community to address the new threat environment. The strategy provides vital direction to efforts to effect these changes. According to the policy directive, it's necessary to challenge the status quo of a "need-to-know" culture and move to one of a "responsibility to provide" mindset.

Filippi noted, however, that inherent in sharing within this new culture comes the need to manage risks associated with the inadvertent disclosure of sensitive information. Implementing the goals for this strategy will involve looking at five areas: culture, policy, governance, economics/resources, and technology/infrastructure. Several speakers provided perspectives from their individual points of view.

Rear Adm. Betsy Hight, DISA vice director (and currently acting director), gave the keynote address and focused on the imperatives of working with many multi-national partners. In our global environment, Hight said, we must now work on improving areas that are new to our troops. Such areas include stability operations, engaging citizens to assist in non-traditional ways, and understanding the norms of cultures other than our own.

In the technical arena, Hight stressed our need for a more agile architecture of composable capabilities that will enable commanders to share information among diverse stakeholders in changing environments. ("Composability" is the ability to select and interchange components depending on the needs of the user.) Through reusing services and creating a directory of capabilities, users will be able to discover content and develop solutions quickly. For instance, DISA's Net-Centric Enterprise Services program provides critical services such as security and collaboration. Hight noted that this will help the military provide better support for communicating through capabilities such as Attribute-Based Access Control (which bases authorization decisions on chains of digitally signed credentials). She also mentioned the Defense Knowledge On-line, modeled after the Army Knowledge Portal, which will be a gateway for users to input, find, and share information.

Army Brig. Gen. Susan Lawrence, U.S. Army Network Enterprise Technology Command/9th Signal Command, gave her views on the challenges of information sharing from the last three years on the ground serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. Network dependency is now a given when working with the "Big E"—comprised of services, agencies, and multinational enterprises—and is more critical than ever, she said. By one count, 13 networks were trying to talk to each other in Iraq simultaneously. At times her greatest nightmare was that the screens would go blank, and many times they did.

"Our network is the Achilles heel of the warfighter. Our enemies are all over the network," she said. Her suggestion for improving network security was to create the position of "Network Czar," someone within the Department of Defense who will champion the cause of better network capabilities making them more robust and consistent.

Col. Kris Kane, Combined Forces Command (CFC)/U.S. Forces Korea, Republic of Korea, spoke about her experiences directing a team supporting the transformation toward a new operating structure by 2012. This is the date when CFC will turn over warfighting operational control of forces to the South Korean government. At that time, there will be separate U.S. and South Korea warfighting commands.

Challenges are many, she said, including language and cryptographic barriers that need to be overcome and networks that do not yet connect to each other. Nevertheless, the United States is a longtime ally of South Korea and will continue to assist as the country establishes its own defense infrastructure, especially in this time of increasing tension in the Asia Pacific region.

Delivering C4ISR Capabilities to NATO

When Rita Lewis first mentioned to friends that she was going to work for NATO, responses ranged from, "Is that a foreign country?" to "Isn't that an offshoot of the United Nations?" Lewis, director of acquisition for NATO's Consultation, Command and Control Agency (NC3A), tries to publicize her organization's missions and goals as much as possible.

She explained that NATO plays an increasingly important role in crisis management and peacekeeping. Among the challenges are health surveillance and the availability of medical supplies, and NATO is looking for other agencies to partner with to increase its effectiveness. Lewis stated, "We serve the NATO Alliance, its constituent nations, and agencies. We also have a smaller, but important, role to play serving nations and entities with which NATO has close ties. We are a non-profit organization and 100% customer-funded, meaning our customers are our only source of operating revenue."

The NC3A delivers products and services for all aspects of the NATO Alliance's command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR)—from system concepts and requirements to fielded systems and other operational assistance. Maintaining an integral and supporting presence in all of NATO's theaters of operation, including the Balkans, Afghanistan, and Iraq, the NC3A implements key systems that the leadership of NATO needs in order to perform political consultation and military functions of command and control.

Reduce Clutter, Improve Communication

During the second day of the conference, the attendees heard about an innovative solution geared towards clearing up cluttered IT workspaces in deployed areas. The request originated in a call from U.S. Central Command (USCENTCOM) to the scientific community in August 2007.

LtCol Diane Staneszewski of USCENTCOM gave an overview of One Box-One Wire (OB1), a technology aimed at providing a capability to access separate military and intelligence networks (such as the SIPRNet intelligence network and the CENTRIXS coalition network) on a single workstation connected to a single wire. This technology will allow a smaller logistics footprint with easier and faster network setup and administration. Collapsing the desktop infrastructure into one box and one wire could quickly replace the current situation, which uses multiple sets of workstation servers and numerous cables. The intent is to develop a commercial-off-the-shelf product that's available for purchase following evaluation and approval for use in an operational environment.

A USCENTCOM case study found that collapsing all networks showed a $212 million savings and a large return on investment over a three-year period. The system that the military selected, developed by Green Hills Software and Objective Interface Systems, became a Joint Capability Technology Demonstration, which means it's on the fast track for consideration to be put into the field. Among other things, the OB1 provides interoperability, deployability, simplicity, flexibility, and affordability—all contributing to better mission success.

Manage the Crisis, Not the Network

Information sharing challenges in crisis response operations are being met in many complementary ways, as evidenced in the creation of The Civil-Military Fusion Centre (CFC/CMO), a part of Allied Command Transformation's response to the Comprehensive Political Guidance document written at the 2006 NATO Riga Summit.

"The crisis manager should focus on managing the crisis and not managing the information," stated Laurent Zazzera, a subject matter expert at the NATO-sponsored center, which is one of a group of nationally or multinationally funded training centers. These centers are focused on collecting and disseminating information as needed, to military or civilian personnel and a host of other entities. Their three-point methodology of providing a collaborative workspace for users, providing pertinent information, and providing subject matter expertise is part of the comprehensive approach to sharing information.

Within this framework, they hope to encourage those civilian groups not normally within the reporting chain to trust those who wish to help, regardless of their affiliation. "The need to share must be the default," Zazzera emphasized. "There is a need for civil and military interaction."

Steve Pitcher, chief of the Information Sharing Division, Joint Staff, spoke to conference attendees about melding the technology, policy, and process changes to achieve the vision of mission-partner information sharing across the unclassified and classified environments. He said that technologists and information security professionals must better understand the operational requirements and intent of current policy restrictions. This would allow them to more effectively advocate for policy changes and achieve the greatest operational return on investment from currently certifiable technologies.

He posed the question, "How can we improve the process with what we have today?" Pitcher noted that, to be effective as a national force, we must have information assurance operating at a high level, so that our own intelligence organizations and closest allies trust the mechanisms enough to share their sensitive information in an operationally relevant way. This process will include federated identity management techniques, many of which are still being developed.

Stability Operations Require Information Sharing

Aligning with the conference theme, Bill Barlow, deputy director of the Integrated Information Communications Technology office within the OASD/NII, emphasized that sharing unclassified information is essential to the success of stability and humanitarian operations.

He also said that unclassified information sharing and collaboration with non-DoD entities continues to be problematic. The DoD culture is "classify by default" rather than "share by default." Over-classification of documents, cumbersome policies, and ad hoc networks have led to distrust by non-government organizations (NGOs) and numerous civilian agencies.

DoD leadership is now working to strengthen military support for stability and humanitarian operations by working with all entities, public and private, that contribute to mission success. All these initiatives are in line with DoD Directive 3000.05, which mandates that "stability operations are a core U.S. military mission that the Department of Defense shall be prepared to conduct and support. They shall be given priority comparable to combat operations." The directive also states that information shall be shared among DoD, U.S. government, foreign governments, NGOs, and the private sector to "secure a lasting peace and facilitate the timely withdrawal of U.S. and foreign forces."

Moving to the Next Stage

The Combatant Commands have not only identified information sharing as critical to operations, they have stated that it must be integrated from the beginning. The next critical stage will be to have information assurance capabilities that enable information sharing solutions across the Global Information Grid for trusted and timely information sharing between and among the DoD, federal, state, and local authorities, and other mission partners.

At the conclusion of the conference, Alan Moore, a MITRE chief engineer, gave a brief overview of MITRE's research program and the technologies our staff are investigating to address many of the challenges discussed over the two-day event. The numerous projects he outlined include both internally funded and customer-supported research. Besides hearing the speakers, attendees had a chance to visit the exhibits and demonstrations and speak with MITRE staff.

—by Evy McDade

Editor's note: For more information on the Multinational Operations Conference, please contact Charles (Chuck) Sanders using the employee directory. Additionally, government employees may receive a CD containing the event's briefings by requesting a copy from the same address.

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