[SatNews] From a cancellation last May due to the flooding in Nashville, the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) successfully held their communication confab in D.C.

DISA's first combined Customer and Industry Forum was held at National Defense University on Fort Lesley J. McNair in Washington, D.C. on July 28 and 29. The forum brought together the previously separate Forecast to the Industry day with key elements of the Customer Partnership Conference. One of DISA’s priorities is continuous communication with its partners, and DISA’s senior leadership warmly welcomed more than 1,300 mission and industry representatives to the forum. The industry partners represented approximately 400 companies. Mission partners included attendees from the Combatant Commands, DoD Agencies, and the Services.

The major theme of the forum was “The Next Engagement,” which reflects the criticality of working together as partners to provide the necessary capabilities and services needed to be successful. DISA’s commitment to its mission partners is to provide a net-centric enterprise infrastructure that enables command and control and information sharing globally at any time to support the demands of the next engagement. The forum included a presentation by the DISA director, an overview of future contract and support opportunities, a panel discussion by DISA senior leaders, breakout sessions, and a networking reception, all focused on providing opportunities to share information with mission and industry partners. The breakout sessions focused primarily on DISA’s three lines of operation — enterprise infrastructure, command and control and information sharing, and operate and assure — and provided detailed information on specific initiatives and programs.

In his opening presentation, DISA Director Army Lt. Gen. Carroll F. Pollett said that the full range of military operations goes far beyond standard combat operations and now includes humanitarian assistance, counterterrorism, stability, and reconstruction operations. “We don’t know where the next incident — the next engagement — is going to occur, and we don’t know when it’s going to occur, but there’s one thing we do know. There’s a huge demand for an information environment that’s adaptive and responsive for the user,” Pollett said. “The demand is clear. We’re looking for information dominance to meet the operational challenge,” he said. To solve operational challenges and move from a stove piped architecture to a more net-centric architecture. DISA must have an enterprise infrastructure that is interoperable and agile with systems that support rapid capability development and information sharing in a robust, protected, and flexible fashion.

Pollett explained that the enterprise infrastructure has four elements: a robust, capable computing platform; a resilient and protected communications network; common enterprise services; and integrated cyber protection and situational awareness for information assurance. These elements are a framework that creates a seamless and transparent environment for the user to plug into. He noted that information comes from many sources. DISA has to make the information available via an infrastructure that supports Web-based technologies, ultimately delivering information to enable users to gain situational awareness for planning and to enable leaders to make decisions based on trusted and protected information. Pollett emphasized that DISA must provide a global operational structure to ensure assured services that are “always on.”