The Defense Department wants to continue, and expand, a pilot information technology (IT) program that exchanges IT and cyber security knowledge and best practices between the private and public sectors, according to the Pentagon’s IT czar.
DoD Chief Information Officer Teri Takai told the House Armed Services Committee during a March 13 hearing the program, formally known as the Information Technology Exchange Program (ITEP), has been a good opportunity for DoD to bring IT experts into the Pentagon and, likewise, see where DoD IT employees could into the private sector to get experience. ITEP is set to expire with the fiscal year on Sept. 30.
“We’re really seeing the benefit of the program and, therefore, it’s very important to us to continue the program,” Takai said. “We are looking very much to take the lessons learned from the program to be able to expand it.”
ITEP is formally the temporary detail of DoD components and private sector employees who work in IT participating in an exchange between the two sectors. DoD components may lend employees to private sector organizations, accept employees from private sector organizations or have simultaneous participation from both a DoD component and a private sector organization.
ITEP provides opportunities ranging from support of DoD’s daily business operations to maturation of its net-centric transformation capabilities. ITEP’s specific areas of interest include: Cloud computing, cyber security, IT consolidation, network services, IT project management, data management and enterprise architecture. An ITEP term runs between three months and one year and may be extended in three month increments for a total of not more than an additional year with proper authorization.
DoD spokesman Lt. Col. Damien Pickart said yesterday in an e-mail the Pentagon also wants to expand its ITEP communications, including enhancing marketing efforts, updating the ITEP website and continuing to meet with private sector personnel to educate them about the program and develop opportunities. Pickart said ITEP, which was created with the fiscal year 2010 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), has had two ITEP exchanges to date involving private sector individuals coming to DoD. Pickart said no DoD employees have been placed at private sector companies as part of ITEP.
Pickart said the two participants included one from Vanguard Advisors LLC, a financial consulting firm serving DoD and federal civilian agencies, and one from Cisco [CSCO], a computer networking firm. Vanguard Advisors Senior Partner Debra Del Mar told Defense Daily yesterday she was the participant. Pickart said Del Mar worked in the office of the Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller) Robert Hale, who requested an IT project manager with expertise in financial systems management. Pickart said during Del Mar’s 2012 six-month term, she conducted analysis of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) issues and provided input to senior leaders to understand the risks and challenges of ERP implementations. Del Mar also assisted in developing environments for DoD financial management processes and systems and participated in workgroups to provide root-cause analysis of ERP issues and help recommend improvements.
Del Mar said yesterday she had a great experience in ITEP and that significant government-industry partnering is essential to solving DoD problems quickly and affordably. Del Mar said her goals during her ITEP term were understanding the workings of the Pentagon, improving financial modernization and promoting nonconventional alliances with industry.
DoD has had problems implementing ERP software, especially the Air Force’s Defense Enterprise Accounting and Management System (DEAMS), which is 7.5 years behind schedule and whose original lifecycle cost estimate has more than quintupled to over $2 billion (Defense Daily, Jan. 23). Del Mar said she wasn’t involved with DEAMS.
Pickart said the Cisco participant began a one-year term in January in the office of the deputy CIO for information enterprise. His detail includes planning the transition and consolidation of DoD IT systems and services and applying best practices in assessing different transition strategies that may be required for various systems, infrastructures and services. Takai in her testimony described the Cisco participant as a “very skilled, very capable architect” who evaluated the Pentagon’s work on its Joint Information Environment (JIE), a Department-wide information consolidation effort. Representatives from Cisco did not return emails for comment by deadline.
Takai said one challenge the program has faced is getting participating companies to understand DoD’s security requirements and its “fairly long” security process. Pickart said security requirements always pose a challenge in any program and are all the more challenging when corporate candidates must secure a clearance to work in a secure DoD environment, as he said is the case with ITEP.
Takai said an ITEP expansion could be modeled on DoD’s Secretary of Defense Corporate Fellows Program (SDCFP) which places officers into positions in the private sector to earn senior service college credit. Companies participating in the 2012-2013 version of SDCFP include traditional large defense contractors and NCR [NCR], JPMorgan Chase [JPM], ExxonMobile [XOM] and Caterpillar [CAT]. Pickart said an advantage the SDCFP program has is that because it typically involves highly-qualified, senior ranking officers, they usually have the necessary clearances and skills to adapt to the environment in which they are entering.