EXPERT EDITION:

Cloud 2016

INSIDE THIS ISSUE:

Federal IT Spend Will Be
Higher for These Two Reasons
What the Army Wants in a
Cloud Vendor
The Problems with the
Pentagons Cloud Policy

NSA CIO Smithbergers Secret

Sauce to Cyber in the Cloud
How Law Enforcement
Collaborates to Fight Terror

BROUGHT TO YOU BY:

Table of
Contents

Agency by agency, chief information officers

are hopping on the highway to the cloud. As
I heard it put at a recent AFFIRM event: Yes,
its a highway, but its like Virginia Rt. 66 at
rush hour, during a snowstormpacked
with cars and not moving much.

FDA, NIH Finding

Solutions to Health
Care Problems in the
Cloud Page 2
Cyber, Modernization
Efforts Driving
Expected Growth in IT
Spending Page 3
Air Force Deploys
Special Team to Fix HR
Technology Systems
Page 4
Finally an Answer
Emerges for Why
IPv6?Page 6
DoDs Cloud Policy
Rains Some Risks, IG
SaysPage 8
18F Shines Some Light
on cloud.gov Platform,
but Concerns Remain
Page 10
Army Shops Cloud
Vendors to Host
Enterprise Apps
Page 12
NSAs Move to the Cloud
Includes Something
Borrowed, Something
NewPage 14
National Park Service
Bringing Online to the
OutsidePage 16
With New Threats,
Law Enforcement
Agencies Look for More
CollaborationPage 18

From a strictly technical standpoint, its easy

for agencies to store and access data via the
cloud.

What makes cloud computing hard is the

long on-ramp of thinking through the policy around balancing
accessibility with the privacy and security attributes that need to
surround the data. And then there is the potentially even longer
off-ramp of changing how individuals and groups re-imagine the
capabilities cloud can provide organizations enterprisewide.

In this Expert Edition, youll see many agencies have achieved

transition to certain cloud competencies, in some cases just the
low-hanging fruit. The Food and Drug Administration is using
infrastructure-as-a-service to process larger amounts of data
on demand, while the National Institutes of Health is using the
cloud to save time generating MRIs. And the FBIs Criminal Justice
Information Services (CJIS) division is improving collaboration
between law enforcement communities to deliver rich data in near
real-time.

As these successes multiply, so do the investments in modernizing

the surviving systems. The Air Force invests in a special team of
cyber and network operations specialists to solve complex technical
pay and personnel glitches. And GSAs 18F rolls out cloud.gov to
help agencies work more effectively with cloud service providers.
Investments in creating new on-ramps that generate cloud
solutions also are increasing.

The Army forms a Cloud Computing Enterprise Transformation

(ACCENT) vehicle to handle the bulk of the services cloud
purchases. The General Services Administration, partnering with
the Defense Information Systems Agency, will look to industry and
DoD to provide feedback on a new multiple award cloud computing
services contract by the end of FY 2016.

The speed at which government travels the cloud highway to

improve internal operations and citizen services is only as fast as
the slowest vehicle, the road conditions or various factors. But rush
hours eventually end and snowstorms turn into blue skies leaving
the driving lanes open for the government to choose its ultimate
destination to modernize and improve how it delivers its mission.

Lisa Wolfe
Program Director
Federal News Radio

FEDERAL NEWS RADIO EXPERT EDITION: CLOUD 2016

FDA, NIH Finding Solutions to Health Care Problems in the Cloud

BY JASON MILLER

t the Food and Drug Administration, the

National Institutes of Health and several
other health care related agencies, the move
to cloud computing is having a dramatic
impact on their mission.

Thomson said now NHLBI is working with

Microsoft on how best to ensure the integrity of
the data because its going to be used by doctors
to make decisions.

At the FDA, we ingest large amounts of data,

regulatory data, industry data and data from
genomic sequencing and medical devices, Todd
Simpson, the FDA chief information officer, said
at the 2015 Health IT day sponsored by AFCEAs
Bethesda, Maryland chapter. What used to take
weeks to process, we can now do in literally
hours.

Thomson said NHLBI also will take advantage of

the cloud to improve collaboration on research.

The FDA, for example, launched a new

infrastructure-as-a-service platform as part of
the Precision Medicine initiative.

He said the infrastructure in the cloud is part of

anongoing transformationto move away from
costly on-premise computing environments.
The cloud lets the FDA spin up more processing
power when needed and spin it down when its
not, said Simpson.

At the NIH, Alastair Thomson, the CIO for the

National Heart, Lung, Blood Institute said his
office is working closely with Microsoft and
Amazon to use their government-only clouds at
three facilities to reduce the time of an MRI scan
to about 20 minutes from typically an hour.
Dr. Michael Hansen of the NHLBI Division of
Intramural Researchis leading the MRI cloud
project and said its a huge advance.

We realized that the raw MRI data coming off

the sensors might as well be encrypted, he said.
You need advanced algorithms to do anything
with it. Its de-identified when it goes away. Its
never stored there. Its computed on and sent
back. It makes it a lot easier.

FEDERAL NEWS RADIO EXPERT EDITION: CLOUD 2016

Its been about building understanding from the

commercial provider about what they actually do,
how are they protecting it and what do we need to
do to layer our protections on top of it, he said.
NIH has just implemented a science DMZ
[separating trusted from untrusted networks] to
allow communication of data over Internet 2 at
extreme high speeds, he said. There is a lot of
learning we have to do about how it will work.
Internet 2 is non-profit made up of public and
private sector organizations, research labs and
universities around the world to provide highspeed network services and a secure testing
environment.

Simpson also has an Internet 2 initiative as part

of FDAs new IT strategic plan.

We have huge interoperability issues between

our systems, he said. But I have additional
interoperability problems. I have labs all across
the U.S. that are coming in with everything
Ethernet and we are not equipped to get those
feeds. The Internet of Things is coming in quickly
in the labs presence and we are trying to adapt
from that standpoint.
Simpson said the FDA also is looking for a
business intelligence-as-a-service platform,
and recently launched data loss prevention
software.

Cyber, Modernization Efforts Driving

Expected Growth in IT Spending
BY JASON MILLER

ybersecurity and the need to modernize

legacy systems are expected to push federal
IT spending higher across both civilian and
Defense sectors over the next few years.

The unclassified spending is justunder $80

billion, around $79.5 billion is what we are
expected to see, said Robert Haas, the chairman
of the Professional Services Councils Vision
Federal IT Budget Outlook Team in an interview
with Federal News Radio. Weve seen a dip in
the last couple of years. There has been a lot
of pressure on the IT spend, along with other
federal budgets. But we have optimism that is
supported by the interviews weve conducted
over the vision process that the 2015 numbers
will have come in above what was expected, as
well as, the 2016 numbers still look to be very
positive.
PSCs Vision teams conducted dozens of
interviews with federal IT and acquisition
executives over nine months to come up with
the51st annual forecast.

PSC estimated the civilian agency IT budget will

be about $49 billion in 2016 and its expected to
increase at about the rate of inflation to about
$52.4 billion in 2021.
The Defense Departments IT budget, which
has dipped by about $3 billion over the last few
years, is expected to slowly increase to $30.5
billion in 2016 and rising to about $33.5 billion
by 2021.

Haas said the optimism of federal executives is a

good sign especially since the trend over the last
four years has been downwardwith a compound
annual growth rate of negative 1.6 percent. That
was much different than the previous five years
when the compound growth rate of the IT budget
across government was 6.4 percent.

Haas said agencies are under pressure to

modernize infrastructure and applications, and
the ongoing cybersecurity challenges require an
infusion of funding.

One of the biggest drivers we are seeing is

around cybersecurity, he said. They are funding
cybersecurity projects oftentimes by taking
funding from other projects that currently exist.
They will cut back on maintenance, they will
cut back sometimes on new starts on programs.
Conversely, the other area we are starting to see
is the replacement of the older systems because
in some cases they are able to save money by
providing a cheaper, more cost effective solution
that is easier to maintain and takes fewer
resources.
The focus on replacing legacy systems is coming
directly from the Office of Management and
Budget. Federal CIO Tony Scott said late last year
that theproblemwith the legacy infrastructure
is a crisis bigger than Y2K.
Haas said there are several takeaways for
industry and agencies.

First to industry, he said agency leaders made it

clear they are looking for value and performance
and systems that provide for quick capabilities
without a huge investment in IT systems.

If you can combine those features you

will probably have a winning system in the
governments eyes, he said. We heard from a
number of folks we interviewed that they partner
with the mission owners from an IT perspective
to make sure the IT systems are aligned with the
processes they support.

FEDERAL NEWS RADIO EXPERT EDITION: CLOUD 2016

Air Force Deploys Special

Team to Fix HR Technology
Systems
V
BY JARED SERBU

irtually everyorganization on the planet suffers from

frustrating IT glitches in its human resources department
from time to time. But most of them arentmanaging pay and
personnel functions for half a million people, and the outages
dont usually last for several hours at a time.

Both of those things are true of the Air Force. Soin early December
2015, the 24th Air Force the services cyber and network
operations specialists stood up aspecial mission team that
will undertake an end-to-end examination of the complex web
of both modern and legacy systems that make up the services
personnel and pay infrastructure and what can be done to make it
morereliable.

BILL MARION, CIO FOR THE AIR FORCE

HEADQUARTERS MANPOWER, PERSONNEL
AND SERVICES ORGANIZATION (A1)

Each time a key link in the Air Forces HR IT enterprise goes offline for a few hours, the services
productivity losses are measured in man-years not man-hours, saidBill Marion, the chief
information officer for the Air Force headquarters manpower, personnel and services organization
(A1).
When were down for three hours and then, with the latency it takes us another 45 minutes to
process each civilian hire, that has serious domino effects, Marion said at an annual Air Force
IT conference hosted by AFCEAs Northern Virginia chapter. We need to root out any of the
inefficiencies we have.

FEDERAL NEWS RADIO EXPERT EDITION: CLOUD 2016

Part of the issue is sheer complexity: To process service members and civilians pay and personnel
transactions, the Air Force today uses 120 separate systems 86 of which duplicate others that
provide similar capabilities at 213 sites around the world.
The disaggregated nature of those IT systems means HR also is an extremely expensive and
manpower-intensive business for the Air Force, costing $1.3 billion per year and requiring one HR
specialist for every 22 airmen on the services payroll.

For the last five years, the Air Force has had a plan to replace several dozen of its legacy HR systems
with a commercially-based enterprise resource planning system it dubs Air Force Integrated Pay and
Personnel System (AF-IPPS).

...the Air Force ... has

become the first DoD
component to transition
critical mission information
into a nongovernment cloud.
We see great benefits
coming from it.
BILL MARION

But the $570 million program missed itstargetto begin

delivering capability by summer 2015 and is rated at
moderately high-risk for failure, according to the
latestdataon the governments IT Dashboard.

Marion said the Air Force is now reexamining its approach to

AF-IPPS.

Its about building an entire ecosystem of lifecycle support for

the HR world in a way thats consistent, repeatable and agile,
he said.
To that end, Marion said the Air Force had taken several steps
of late to simplify the network architecture that supports its
HR data, to make its systems more self-service so that they
dont require as much professional support, and to get out
of the business of hosting its own data centers as much as
possible.

In August 2015, the Air Force got the go-ahead to host sensitive data in a commercial cloud
environment at what DoDdefinesas impact level four. Since then, it has become the first DoD
component to transition critical mission information into a nongovernment cloud.

The project involves the Air Forces existing myPers portal, which lets airmen handle some pay and
benefits matters on a self-service basis.

Weve still got a few critical steps to go because its the first time weve done this within the DoD,
with new concepts like cloud access points and rules for email flows, but the core is in place, Marion
said. We see great benefits coming from it.

FEDERAL NEWS RADIO EXPERT EDITION: CLOUD 2016

Finally an Answer
Emerges for Why IPv6?
BY JASON MILLER

here do agencies stand a decade after the

White House first called on agencies to
adopt the more secure protocol IPv6?

It was so important, at one time, that

the Office of Management and Budget issued
two memos requiring agencies to move to the
more secure, better protocol on the network
backbone. The CIO Council also stood up a
working group, issued how-to guides, and there

FEDERAL NEWS RADIO EXPERT EDITION: CLOUD 2016

were the assorted conferences, talks and lunches

about the importance of IPv6.
Thefirst timeOMB mandated agencies move
was in 2005, giving them a 2008 deadline.
Then two years after most agencies missed the
2008 deadline, OMBcame upwith two more
deadlines: By 2012, agencies must upgrade
public or external facing services and by 2014,
they must upgrade internal client applications

that communicate with public services or

support enterprise networks.
Nearly a decade in the making, the latest
statistics from the National Institute of
Standards and Technology show quietly
agencies are leading industry.
And the FCC became the latest in a small
number to fully make the jump to IPv6.

With the recent move

of the core FCC data
center to a commercial
cloud provider, FCC
enabled IPv6 for
public facing systems,
said FCC CIODavid
Bray, in an email to
Federal News Radio.

at the Energy Department, who also led the

governments transition efforts to IPv6, said
the inability to explain why IPv6 is important
beyond the technology aspects has been the
biggest obstacle for companies and agencies.

But Tseronis said with the emergence over the

last year or so of connected devices under the
moniker the Internet of Things, there finally is
a good explanation of why moving to IPv6 is so
important.

...were hoping commercial

cloud providers adopt it for their
public-facing services soon...


CHRISTINE CALVOSA/FCC DEPUTY CIO OF RESILIENCY

The FCC made the move,

in part, because of its
decision to move to the commercial cloud.

Our strategy at FCC is to reuse commercial

cloud services going forward, which is why were
hoping commercial cloud providers adopt it for
their public-facing services soon, saidChristine
Calvosa, the FCCs deputy chief information
officer of resiliency, in a statement to Federal
News Radio.

One of the reasons the public sector is way ahead

of the private sector is commercial providers
dont see the demand for IPv6. Even though
many have rung the alarm bell about running out
of IPv4 addresses, the better security that comes
with IPv6 and host of other benefits, the private
sector hasnt been overly excited about it.
Peter Tseronis, CEO and founder of Dots and
Bridges and aformerchief technology officer

If I was using the term

Internet of Things in
2005, it would have
been a lot sexier than
IPv6, Tseronis said. We
struggled with what
IPv6 means. We got
bogged down in technical
jargon and it became all
about compliance and
scorecard.

The good news is agencies actually are making

real progress.

NIST runs a governmentwidescorecardon

agency progress to move external domains to
IPv6. The results show a strong majority of the
networks either are IPv6 enabled or on their
way. The Department of Interior, NASA and
the Social Security Administration have fully
moved their domains to IPv6. Others such as
the National Science Foundation, the Veterans
Affairs Department and the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission are close.

On the other end of the spectrum, the

departments of Agriculture, Health and Human
Services and the General Services Administration
have a long way to go.

FEDERAL NEWS RADIO EXPERT EDITION: CLOUD 2016

DoDs Cloud Policy Rains

Some Risks, IG Says
BY SCOTT MAUCIONE

Defense Department Inspector

Generalsreport found problems with
the Pentagons cloud policy that may have
monetary and cybersecurity risks.

DoD does not maintain a comprehensive list

of cloud computing service contracts because
the departments chief information officer
failed to establish a standard, departmentwide definition for cloud computing. In
addition, the DoD CIO did not develop an
integrated repository that could provide
detailed information used to identify cloud
computing service contracts, the report
stated.
As a result, DoD has no way of determining
if it is actually saving money by migrating to
the cloud and may not be able to effectively
identify and monitor cloud computing
security risks, the report stated.

DoDs ability to track cloud computing cost

savings and benefits is greatly limited if DoD
is not aware what cloud computing service

FEDERAL NEWS RADIO EXPERT EDITION: CLOUD 2016

contracts exist within

DoD [and] unless DoD
Components accurately
classify their information systems as using
cloud computing services, DoD CIO will not
be aware what security risks are specific to
those services, the report stated.

The DoD IG found inconsistencies between a

list of cloud computing service contracts kept
by the CIO and the ones kept by the military
departments for fiscal 2011-14.
For example, the Army identified
ninecontracts for its cloud computing
services in that period, while the DoD CIO
only identified three. Likewise, the Navy
identified zero contracts when the CIO had
two potential contracts.

Part of that problem may have been because

of the DoDs lack of a repository for cloud
computing service contract information.

The DoD CIO uses four different IT reporting

systems to gather information on DoD cloud

computing. However, the systems are

not integrated and do not provide
the level of detail desired by the CIO,
the report stated.

DoD has no way of determining if it is actually

saving money by migrating to the cloud and
may not be able to effectively identify and
monitor cloud computing security risks.

The DoD CIO is taking steps to remedy the

situation by looking for ways to link the
systems.

The DoD IG recommended the CIO issue

guidance to establish a department-wide
definition or clarify NISTs definition. The
DoD CIOs office responded, saying itsDoD
Cloud Computing Security Requirements
Guide (SRG)established a standard
definition of cloud as well as requirements
and processes for assessing cloud computing
security risks.
The DoD IG disagreed with the assessment.

The IG also recommended the DoD CIO

establish an integrated repository of
cloud computing contracts. The CIOs
office responded stating it implemented
enhancements to its systems to better collect
contract details.

The DoD CIO was contacted for further

comments on the report but stated it had
nothing to add.

In recent years, the militaryhas made an

effort to save money by hosting less of its
material on its own drives and contracting
more private companies to provide cloud
services. Private companies can procure the
best available technology faster than DoD,
which needs congressional appropriations.
The DoD CIO last yeargavethe military
services and department components the
ability to procure their own cloud services
independent of the department.

FEDERAL NEWS RADIO EXPERT EDITION: CLOUD 2016

18F Shines Some Light

on cloud.gov Platform,
but Concerns Remain
BY JASON MILLER

he General Services Administrations

18F organization rolled out a new service,
cloud.gov, last October.

While there was some initial confusion of

what cloud.gov exactly is, an 18F spokesman
confirmed that cloud.gov is a platform-as-aservice based on the open source technology
called Cloud Foundry.

Cloud Foundryis a not-for-profit supported

by a whos who of private sector technology
companies, such as IBM, VMWare, Intel, EMC
and many more. The organizations website
says it is built for fast-cycle innovation of cloud
applications and boasts higher rates of user
adoption, faster cycle time and higher reliability.
This sounds good on paper. 18F is taking
advantage of a no-cost or low-cost offering to
help agencies move more quickly to the cloud.

Cloud.gov enables 18F to deploy its cloudbased applications with baseline security and
scalability concerns addressed consistently up
front, without dramatically scaling the number
of cloud operations experts in our organization,
an 18F spokesman said by email.
But if cloud services are widely considered
a commodity, then why is the government
competing with the private sector to offer these
services?

Six vendors have earned Joint Authorization

Board (JAB) approvals for PaaS and nine vendors
have received agency approvals according to the
Federal Risk Authorization and Management
Program (FedRAMP) website.

10

FEDERAL NEWS RADIO EXPERT EDITION: CLOUD 2016

So if 15 vendors and agencies are offering PaaS

already, why did 18F presumably spend time and
money to develop another competing platform?
The 18F spokesman said cloud.gov isnt
competing with the private sector.

By using Cloud Foundry and making cloud.

gov available, were raising the lowest common
denominator capabilities agencies should
expect from any vendor to the Cloud Foundry
capabilities, and enabling greater competition,
he said.

The spokesman added PaaS vendors not part of

Cloud Foundry also will benefit because cloud.
gov will increase the migration of government
applications to a 12-factor model, and therefore
the applicability of PaaS models to government.

12-factor applications have very little

dependency on the exact platform that is
supporting them, so these applications will
be more easily ported to non-Cloud Foundry
commercial PaaS solutions as well, he said.
Vendors of such systems have open-book access
to how cloud.gov works, and can therefore
provide easy on-ramp solutions to migrate
government applications to their platform.
Is 18F is trying to be a PaaS cloud broker?

It looks like they are giving you templates and

ways to work with particular CSP, said one
federal CIO. The more I looked at cloud.gov, the
more I would like to know the details. It didnt
seem like they were trying to duplicate what
industry was doing, but help us get to the cloud
faster.
So why are vendors and some in government
so concerned? It is a matter of better
communication from 18F? Or does the entire
concept of 18F make feds and contractors
uncomfortable?

Cloud.gov will be worth watching to see if 18F

can attract customers beyond the work they are
doing for agencies. It also will be interesting to
see when Congress decides to take a look at the
18F concept and whether the government is
unfairly competing with the private sector.

Maximize the full value of your technology assets

with ViON Infrastructure As A Service Offerings.
Gain deeper insight into best practices for procuring technology as a
service DOWNLOAD these White Papers Today:

Flexible IT: An Overview of Infrastructure as-a-Service

Information Technology as-a Service Considerations
for Contract Administration
 SC Technology Council Report on best practices for
P
Federal Agency Adoption of Commercial Cloud Solutions

Army
T
Shops
Cloud
Vendors
to Host
Enterprise
Apps

he Army has started polling

prospective cloud computing

vendors on their capabilities,

laying the groundwork for

anew contract vehicle thats

likely to handle the lions share of

theservices cloud purchases over

the next three years.

Arequest for information, issued

December 30, 2015, asks companies

to describe their approaches to dozens of

support services the Army believes it will

need as it transitions legacy applications from

government data centers to commerciallyoperated ones between now and the end

of 2018, including authentication, network

monitoring and the ability to have secondary

facilities take over in case of a system failure.
The overall project, dubbed Army Cloud
Computing Enterprise Transformation

(ACCENT) still is in the planning stages, but

a draft request for proposals released last

November envisions a two-step acquisition

process in which cloud vendors would first

qualify for spots on ACCENT via basic ordering

agreements (BOAs) but with no guarantee

of future work. They would then compete for

individual projects at the task order level.

BY JARED SERBU

12

FEDERAL NEWS RADIO EXPERT EDITION: CLOUD 2016

Functionally, the BOAs would operate much like

the blanket purchase agreements government

agencies routinely use to buy a variety of goods

Additionally, companies would need to support

Armys program executive office for enterprise

sure all the government data theyre hosting

and services, said Doug Haskin, the project

director for enterprise services within the
information systems.

But we think the BOA is better for the high-

dollar contract actions that are associated with

hosting services, he said in an interview with
Federal News Radio. It also gives us more

flexibility to adapt to uncertain requirements

when you dont know all the requirements

up front, which is the position were in now.

Keeping that flexibility is important for us
because we know that the guidance and

policies for commercial cloud in DoDhavebeen

changing and will continue to change. I think its

also going to benefit industry, because if theyre
going to commit the resources to get onto this
agreement they need to know its going to be
viable and not obsolete in a year or two.

The Army envisions using the contract to

buy infrastructure-as-a-service, platform-

as-a-service and software-as-a-service cloud

offerings. Vendors would need to meet the

governmentwide FedRAMP standards for cloud

security and have DoD-specificprovisional
authorizationsto sell their wares to the

government, but the additionalDoD security

controlsthey would need to comply with would

be set out task order by task order.

DoDs public key infrastructure to authenticate

users via their common access cards, make

is physically stored in the U.S. and be willing

to open their facilities to DoD security teams

at any time in case of a cybersecurity incident

or criminal

investigation. And
under task orders
issued for DoDs

highest unclassified
cloud security

designation
Level 5 all

government data
would have to be
kept physically
separate from

that of the hosting

companies

commercial clients.

Keeping that
flexibility is important
for us because
we know that the
guidance and policies
for commercial cloud
in DoD have been
changing and will
continue to change.
DOUG HASKIN, PROJECT DIRECTOR FOR
ARMY ENTERPRISE SERVICES

The Army plans to

use the ACCENT

contract to follow through onguidancethe

services chief information officer issued in

July of 2014, telling all Army components that

they had until 2018 to migrate as many of their

enterprise-level applications as possible to
commercial environments.

FEDERAL NEWS RADIO EXPERT EDITION: CLOUD 2016

13

NSAs Move to the

Cloud Includes
Something Borrowed,
Something New
BY JASON MILLER

14

FEDERAL NEWS RADIO EXPERT EDITION: CLOUD 2016

he National Security Agency is taking a page

from commercial service providers as it sets
up three different cloud services. But NSA
is doing cloud computing in its own special
way.
Greg Smithberger, the NSA chief information
officer, said the agency is bringing the
Intelligence Community IT Enterprise (ICITE)
program to reality by taking some of the
concepts of the commercial cloud and applying
special cybersecurity technologies on top.
This is very similar to the sort of commercial
cloud offering that everyone is familiar with,
but in this case we are offering it inside our
very secure environment, he said. Were

GREG SMITHBERGER, NSA CIO

also providing a shared data storage cloud

for the intelligence community that allows us
to integrate data from across the community
while still maintaining that very fine-grained
access control and enforcing that need to know.
Thats based on a lot of that unique technology
developed at NSA. We also are providing shared
resources for the community that allows people
from across the community to run shared data
analytics on that shared data repository while
still ensuring users only see the data theyre
personally authorized to see.

Smithberger said all three clouds are operational

but NSA and its IC partners are expanding and
scaling out these initial foundational capabilities.
The end goal, he said, is to get capabilities
delivered to the analysts that will let them more
easily and more routinely collaborate across the
IC.
The rate of adoption is different throughout the
IC. Smithberger said NSA is using the shared
storage cloud and resources for analytics
aggressively, while others in the IC are working
those tools into their processes.

It is successful but we have a ways to go to

before we realize the DNIs full vision for the full
collaborate joint environment for the intelligence
community and it has
other components
than the cloud
components, he said.

NSA also is planning

to adopt the shared
desktop environment
led by the Defense
Intelligence Agency
and the National
Geospatial Intelligence
Agency. He said its
similar to the virtual desktop environment
currently in use at NSA.
That will probably be in the next couple of
years, Smithberger said.

NSA is preparing for a new contract as part of its

typical desktop refresh cycle. Smithberger said
he expects to have a few thousand users on the
shared desktop in the coming year, but the major
transition will not happen until the contract is
awarded in 2017 or 2018.

FEDERAL NEWS RADIO EXPERT EDITION: CLOUD 2016

15

National Park Service

Bringing Online to
the Outside
BY JASON MILLER

he Interior Departments National

Park Service celebrates its centennial
anniversary in 2016.

connectivity options as IT evolves, those

technologies often get cheaper and smaller.

Shane Compton, the National Park Services

associate CIO, said the first step is to work
with the telecommunications carriers and
their subcontractors to bring the signal into
places like the Grand Canyon or Yosemite
National Park.

NPS is focusing onincreasing bandwidthat

national parks because it wants to provide
visitors more content whether photos or
text or maps about the monument or park.

As part of the commemoration, NPS

wants to bring new technology tools and
services to national parks.

We are looking to help people to pick

up their own signal when they are there
with their mobile device, he said. We are
looking at partnering on testing new ideas.
We have new tools out there that have been
demonstrated at some of our national events
where we have things like cellular on wheels
or high-speed microwave. Some of those
16

FEDERAL NEWS RADIO EXPERT EDITION: CLOUD 2016

Compton said his office is evaluating what

can be done and is developing a plan that by
2018, high speed connections are available at
all national parks.

We are asking the parks, our regions

to come up with why you think WiFi
might actually be better for the customer
experience. It may not be a better customer
experience to hike out in the backcountry,
but if you are in a visitors center or looking
at monuments, that is where that might
be beneficial. We are trying to make some
conscious decisions on where it will be the
best for the public.

JONATHON JARVIS, NATIONAL PARK SERVICE

DIRECTOR

Compton said hes working closely with the

mission areas to ensure a better customer
experience across all areas of the park
service.

National Park Service DirectorJonathan

Jarvislaunched theCall to Actionplan in
2011 in preparation for the centennial in
2016. Compton said many of the IT efforts to
focus on the customer arecoming from that
strategy.

IT is becoming more and more important for

the customer experience, he said. I can tell
you the complaints we get when somebody
goes in to a park and finds a hotel doesnt
have [the] high-speed WiFi so they can do
their work while they are on vacation. Its an
expectation now so IT has to make sure its
there.

But its not just about the external customers.

Compton is focused on internal technology
improvements as well.
He said NPS is considering moving more and
more sites and applications to thecloud.

NPS.gov is one of the largest federal

websites. People hit it every day. They may
not hit the home page, but they will do a
Google search for a park and be on our site.
Imagine a million people on the website at
one time on one day; the cloud is perfect for
that, he said. We just think its a matter of
time before we move a lot of what we have to
the cloud.
Compton said NPS goal is to move off
platforms and current servers and put
those applications into the cloud as part of a
normal refresh life cycle.

FEDERAL NEWS RADIO EXPERT EDITION: CLOUD 2016

17

With New Threats,

Law Enforcement
Agencies Look for More
Collaboration
BY NICOLE OGRYSKO

ecent terrorist attacks and

intelligence operations
in Paris and Beirut are
underlining the need for
better information sharing
between U.S. law enforcement
agencies.

Law enforcement leaders said they

understand the power that data can have
on their ability to respond to crises, but the
path to sharing that information and developing
interoperable systems to support it has been too
slow.
We get lots of information, said Karl Mathias,
chief information officer and assistant director
of the information technology division at the
U.S. Marshals Service, during a November 2015
panel discussion at AFCEA Bethesdas monthly
breakfast. I have it from all over, from many
different sources, which is the problem. Its

18

FEDERAL NEWS RADIO EXPERT EDITION: CLOUD 2016

taking data and turning it

into knowledge that we can
execute against, [that] is really
the struggle we face.

Too often, government thinks

in terms of programs and
systems and the agencies that
own them, said Jeff Johnson, chief
technology officer and assistant director
for IT applications and data division at the FBI.

Instead, agencies should consider the

information itself and what purpose it will serve
toward the larger goal.

If we focus in on that data and those attributes

that we really meaningfully want to protect, it
will enable us to more broadly share in the cloud,
because we will talk about what people have
legitimate, authorized access to what data, he
said. What data needs to be shared with which

If we focus in on that data and those attributes

that we really meaningfully want to protect, it will
enable us to more broadly share in the cloud...
...we must start to reshape the way we define
programs, the way we fund programs and the way
we acquire programs in the government.
JEFF JOHNSON, CTO/FBI

communities, and which protections that goes

under. Right now, we are protecting systems. We
protect devices, and then we have exceptions to
those devices.
The devices and systems law enforcement
agencies use to gather, process and share threat
data are improving, but also at too slow a pace.

The FBIs Criminal Justice Information Services

(CJIS) division is improving collaboration
between law enforcement communities, Johnson
said. The hope is to add more rich data and
deliver it closer to real-time.

The Marshals Service is working with the Bureau

of Prisons to develop an automated, paperless
data sharing program, Mathias said.
The agency also hired a chief data officer to
work with Mathias in the CIOs office on the data
analytics side.

For Mathias, his priorities lie in perfecting the

basic technologies and services his employees
need to do their jobs, like tablet computers,
desktop support and mobile phones.

Ultimately, Johnson said the real task is making

the data the FBI collects transparent, and
then equipping the right people with the right
information to make better decisions and
intercept possible threats.

That information doesnt belong to a system,

Johnson said. It doesnt belong to a program.
It doesnt belong to an agency. It belongs to the
taxpayers. It belongs to the citizens of the world,
and it must be shared. In order to get there,
we must start to reshape the way we define
programs, the way we fund programs and the
way we acquire programs in the government.

FEDERAL NEWS RADIO EXPERT EDITION: CLOUD 2016

19

Download the power of knowledge,

packed with wisdom, from our team
of journalists and the entire
Expert Edition Library.

Free at FederalNewsRadio.com
Download today!

Experience the Difference.

EXPERT EDITION:

Cloud 2016