Category Archives: Defense Department

Contractors & Vendors, Defense Department

Sorenson repeats his call for "blackberry-like" tools during Baghdad speech

Army CIO LTGEN Jeffrey Sorenson spoke at a meeting of AFCEA Baghdad today, and repeated his call for a unified, universal information service for soldiers that would give them “a universal data storage point, with one phone number, e-mail, and one set of collaborative tools that will not change, even when one physically moves, and will be effective anywhere in the world.” Sorenson has made this goal part of nearly every major address he’s made in the last year, as he steers the Army toward a Network Service Center model for IT–essentially moving the Army’s networks toward a cloud computing model.
From the Multinational Force Iraq press desk:

Lt. Gen. Sorenson began by saying to the group, “When it comes to
information, it is not what you know, it is what you share.” He added, “The U.S. Army is transforming what its IT network will look like by developing a better expeditionary capability and by having the ability to establish collaboration as a way of doing business. The Army will be transitioning a lot of independent networks into a single network enterprise. In order to be effective, we in the United States have to be able to communicate with all our expeditionary forces. The current network we have is not a single enterprise and we have to do a lot to make it function to the expeditionary level.”

Also at the event were Iraqi Maj. Gen. Sa’ad Kadhum, Director General of Communications for the Ministry of Information; Brig. Gen. Aliwe Jassam, Director – Radio Repair Division; Brig. Gen. Mahmood Al-Anni from the Ministry of Information; Brig. Gen. Ahmed Hoan, Advanced First Responder Network Program Manager for the Ministry of Information; and Dr. Ali Taresh, Chief Information Officer for the Ministry of Defense.

Taresh asked what the Iraqi MOD could learn from the problems the MNF coalition had faced. Sorenson answered that “getting people to come to agreement on the governance and protocol and the network structure was a challenge. We now have a process where we have one single group that looks at the network structure.”

AFCEA’s Baghdad Chapter opened last November.

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Defense Department, Policy

Submitted without comment: Gates calls for forthright budget discussions

Gates Calls for Forthright, Collegial Budget Discussions

By Jim Garamone
American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, Feb. 25, 2009 – Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has called for forthright, collegial discussions among Defense Department leaders to make tough choices about programs, projects and procurement as the defense portion of the fiscal 2010 federal budget takes shape.
Gates asked those participating in the discussions to sign a nondisclosure agreement because leaks may discourage the free exchange of ideas, Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell said today.

“This is highly sensitive stuff, involving programs costing tens of billions of dollars, employing hundreds of thousands of people and go to the heart of our national security,” Morrell said. “He wants this process to be as disciplined and as forthright as possible.”

Gates wants the budget to be judged as a whole, rather than in parts via selective leaks, Morrell said. The secretary thinks the agreement “will create a climate in which you can ultimately produce a better product, as people can speak candidly with the confidence that it will not be leaked,” he added.

The secretary wants the budget to be judged in its totality “because that’s where you will see the strategic balance he is trying to build,” Morrell said.

In testimony before Congress in January, Gates talked about making the hard choices on procurement. Projects that are significantly behind schedule or over budget are more likely to face the budget ax, he said.

Gates called for discipline in the acquisition process and said the department must freeze requirements at contract time.

Big-ticket items are going to go through a very thorough review as part of the fiscal 2010 budget process, Morrell said.

The White House’s Office of Management and Budget is expected to announce top-line budget figures tomorrow, along with a fiscal 2010 war supplement.

Obama wants to stop the supplemental process and transfer the costs for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to the base budget, but will not be able to do so this year, Morrell said.

“It’s extremely difficult for us to predict what our level of commitment is going to be in either theater, let alone theaters that we haven’t potentially thought of, God forbid, a year, two years, let alone 10 years from now,” he said. “So we are trying to be as helpful as possible to this process, but some of this stuff is not known at this point.”

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