Trust,
Yet Verify
In the
new world of
IS, it’s all about information assets; we are separating data
from applications and we are making both the information asset and the
applications available as services.
For Information Sharing
– Trust, Yet
Verify – that famous slogan from the Cold War era
is still
as true today as it ever was. The biggest challenge is still to build
that collaborative trust environment between federal agencies
themselves and with
state/locals and the private sector.
The issue comes down to how do we share information from the
operational community with the non-operational
community? That’s where the real
barriers are. People who have to have that information to do their job
are very conscious about with whom they share it. And they may not
share because it may compromise their ability to do their job. So how
does government break out of this “Catch-22”
situation?
Getting
Granular
“We’ve taken some very great pains to try to really
get
down to a granular level with our state and local customers,”
said Robert Riegle, Director of the State and Local Government Program
Office, Office of Intelligence & Analysis, DHS.
“Keeping in mind that some of their information needs are
unique,
for example a maritime state is different from Arizona, we have no
cookie cutter approach,” said Riegle. “That makes
our job
harder and that’s why important to have these partnerships so
you
get as much support from these communities as possible.”
Fusion
centers are all about leveraging federal, state, local and private
sector resources together to move relevant information and intelligence
quickly and to enable rapid analytic and operational judgements.
One of the things DHS does is assess each one of their
customers’
needs uniquely to get a handle on what 800,000 law enforcement
personnel and 1.2 million First Responders need. “We are even
working with individual tribes on
their specific risks. This makes what we deliver to them more valuable
because they don’t have to go through piles of data; they get
actual ‘needles out of that haystack’
information,”
explains Reigle.
Feeling
Comfortable
FBI CIO Van Hitch concentrates on delivering law enforcement
information to the law enforcement community. Where he runs
into
issues is when the FBI starts to share that information broadly beyond
law enforcement.
“That’s why is very important with the fusion
center
concept that we are pursuing that we have the privacy and civil
liberties guidelines in place,”
explained Hitch. This is in addition to access protocols for ID
management
that provide privileged access to those systems.
“When those systems are in place, then we feel very
comfortable we can
be sure that those who need the information will get it by role and in
the same way they know where the information is coming from,”
noted Hitch. “So we need to make sure we take care of the
privacy
and civil liberty policies and well as the technology to make sure that
is happening.”
It’s
All About Information Assets
According to Mike Krieger, Principal Director of IT Management
&
Technology in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the question
isn’t identifying the stakeholders anymore.
“In the
new world of IS, it’s all about information assets; we are
separating data from applications and we are making both the
information asset and the applications available as services. For
Krieger that means adhering to the five tenants that enable IS:
- Is the information asset visible? Can
people find it? Is it discoverable?
- Is it accessible? Are we willing to share
this information and identify the business rules on who can access it?
- Is the information asset understandable?
“We can have discussions about the National Information
Exchange
and the Maritime Information Exchange, but they are semantics to make
information accessible and understandable,” said Krieger.
- Is the information trusted? Does the both
the
information producer trust that only authorized people will get it and
will information consumer trust that the producer is the authoritative
source?
- Is it governable? Because we are sharing
across
information across the federal government and with coalition allies,
state and local governments, and it must be governed.
“I look through this window: Is it visible accessible,
understandable, trusted and governable,” noted Krieger.
Fusing
Information
At the heart of the collaborative environment, where trusted
information is shared is the fusion center movement.
One of the outcomes of the 9/11 tragedy has been the development of
fusion centers. In 2004 and 2005, many states began creating fusion
centers using local, state, and federal funds. Today according to DHS
there are 58 operational centers in 46 states.
“At the state and local level, they have a new post 9/11
job,” noted
Ambassador Thomas McNamara, Program Manager for the Information Sharing
Environment at the recent AFCEA Solutions Conference on
Information Sharing.
“They are the front line defenders against terrorism that has
penetrated our borders. This is a new aspect of defense they
hadn’t had to do before. We need to face this without
exaggerating it, but not underestimating it either.”
McNamara explained that fusion centers play a decisive role and are a
critical part of the president’s National Strategy for
Information Sharing. “They strengthen the
nation’s
ability to protect communities from future attacks.”
“Our business is to provide them the people and tools for
their
threat mitigation efforts on behalf of the rest of the national
intelligence community,” added DHS’ Riegle.
“We push
it down and also make sure that any information that’s
revealed
from their day-to-day activities is brought back into the federal
government so we can get a better understanding of the risk we face on
a national basis.”
DHS
assesses
each customer’s unique information needs to give them the
“needle in a haystack” data out of the enormous
amount of
data gathered.
Riegle explained that DHS uses fusion centers as a facilitation point
for the information exchanges specific to threat information and also
use them as a network themselves. As a result DHS has a vertical
relationship with the state and locals and a horizontal relationship
with federal partners.
Together “we think that represents the front lines of defense
of
really connecting the dots in our threat mitigation strategy
broadly,” said Riegle.
“By end of FY we plan to have 35 officers employed in fusion
centers around the country and 40 will have connectivity to national
level intelligence network through the DHS data network – a
huge
enabler for state and local officials.”
The NCTC
– Our National Fusion Center
Ambassador McNamara is also proud of the progress made so far in
improved information sharing and the role the National Counter
Terrorism Center.
Established in 2004, the NCTC supports agencies in their analysis and
activities said McNamara. It is now the central shared knowledge bank
of known and suspected terrorism and activities and ensures all levels
of government have all the source information and all support they need
to execute their plans or perform independent or alternative missions.
The
result is the all this information is available not only to them but to
all agencies and entities that are part of the NCTC.
McNamara also announced that within the NCTC a new interagency threat
assessment and coordination group has been established to facilitate
production of what we call “federally coordinated
information” related to terrorism for dissemination to state,
local and private sector partners.
“Indeed the NCTC is effectively our national fusion
center,” said McNamara. At the same time fusion centers are
valuable tools for DOD since their homeland defense missions depend on
time delivery of domestic terrorism information for success noted
McNamara.
Most of our military assets are located in CONUS and that means that
hookup and information sharing environment has to include DOD within
the 50 states.
“We are getting there,” said McNamara.
“It is not as
strong as it needs to be yet, but we are making
progress.”
Ambassador
McNamara
made his comments at the AFCEA Conference on Information Sharing.
Robert Riegle, Van Hitch and Mike Krieger made their remarks during the
Federal Executive Forum.
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