Rumors of DISA's demise dismissed

[InfoSec News <isn () c4i org>]

http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2003/0106/web-disa-01-09-03.asp

By Dan Caterinicchia 
Jan. 9, 2003

Rumors have been swirling for months around the Pentagon and in the 
private sector about a possible massive reorganization of the Defense 
Information Systems Agency, but a top DISA official said the rumors 
are untrue and that the agency is being given even more funding and 
responsibility.

The war on terrorism and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's vision 
for transformation - focused on joint operations and enhanced command, 
control, communications, computer, intelligence, surveillance and 
reconnaissance (C4ISR) capabilities - has caused some DOD and industry 
officials to question whether DISA is the right agency to handle 
numerous tasks, including some of its core and "best-fit" (noncore) 
missions.

DISA's five core missions are communications, command and control, 
defensive information operations, combat support computing, and joint 
interoperability support activities. One example of a best-fit mission 
is supporting White House and presidential communications systems, 
said Robert Hutten, director for strategic plans, programming and 
policy at DISA. 

DISA officials briefed DOD and service-level senior leaders on the 
agency's core and best-fit missions last year, and there were no 
proposals at that time to move functions to another agency, and there 
have not been any since then at that level, Hutten said.

"There are always studies and people that propose things, but there is 
no active action right now that I know of that would cause that to 
happen," he said.

One persistent rumor dogging DISA is that it will lose its authority 
over joint command and control programs to Joint Forces Command 
(JFcom). Army Lt. Gen. Joseph Kellogg Jr., director of command, 
control, communications and computer systems for the Joint Staff, has 
repeatedly called for JFcom to be put in charge of joint C2 programs, 
and late last year he said a decision was forthcoming to make that 
happen.

Hutten said he had no doubt that JFcom's role in the joint C2 arena 
would be enhanced, but mostly at the tactical, or battle management, 
level as opposed to the strategic or operational level. He said that 
JFcom's role would be more "oversight and requirements gathering and 
generation," but that the acquisition programs would remain with the 
individual services and agencies that have them today.
 


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