Forwarded from: "eric wolbrom, CISSP" <ericat_private> http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/02/11/06/021106hncooper.xml By Loretta W. Prencipe November 6, 2002 WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Calling for help from the private sector, Steve Cooper, special assistant to the President and CIO in the White Houses' Office of Homeland Security, called for a "network of networks" of federal, state, and local governments and certain private sector industries to be developed as a national enterprise architecture (NEA). "What if we take existing networks at all levels of government and the private sector as appropriate and integrate them? The challenges are true standards and interoperability. We can solve those problems," Cooper said at the Federal CTO Forum 2002 here. The day after the Republicans captured a mid-term majority in the House and Congress, Cooper stated that he is confident a Department of Homeland Security bill will be passed and that a national enterprise architecture could be a reality in two to three years. "The priorities that we have set are focused on the information sharing and systems arena. ... We need to get the right information to the right people all the time. This is what we're about in Homeland Security," he said. Citing the info sharing and systems integration models among various federal and local law enforcement bodies, Cooper called for the help of state and local governments and those companies that comprise the critical infrastructure, including utilities and transportation companies. Cooper stated that state governments would have primary responsibility for intrastate; feds would handle interstate and backbone issues. But the question of sharing information among the federal government and private-sector companies continues to be a problem. "We have to get Congress on board and the private sector on board on how to connect to critical infrastructure," Cooper said. Emphasizing that the NEA is separate from the Defense Department (DoD) and from the Federal Enterprise Architecture championed by Norman Lorentz, CTO for the Office of Management and Budget, Cooper did say that the NEA "dovetails with FEA. The Homeland Security mission is part of the federal enterprise, but there are parts that are not. We also have had positive discussions with DoD to make sure that we're not building three stovepipe architectures." Confident that a bill establishing the Homeland Security Department will soon be passed, Cooper has already started addressing transition technology issues. "There are day one priorities," he said. "First is to ensure that we have e-mail capabilities across the department from day one. You want to create a brand and identity for the new entity. You use technology for this." Saying that establishing a "brand" is important to the identity of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Cooper is considering setting up a LDAP directory across the agencies that would comprise the DHS to decode and translate e-mail addresses and get e-mail inside DHS. "When send out [e-mail, it] will be @DHS. Eventually we would migrate," he said. Other transition priorities include setting up internal and external portal capabilities and conducting an inventory of the various organizations' IT portfolios, Cooper said. "A lot of the IT portfolios sit in the program areas. That's [a question of] turf, budget. Isn't Washington [supposed to be] a zero-sum game?" But Cooper is confident that such politics can be overcome. "What if the right parties that have a vested interest all sat down and agreed on some shared objectives? And agreed upon a fair amount of work and how to divvy it up? Rather than everyone trying to do similar [functions] with the best of intentions and often inadvertently." Despite not having any procurement capabilities, Cooper has had successful discussions with the DoD and intelligence agencies on new sharing of watch list information. "We have tackled the process and the ownership issues of these lists. We haven't built an electronic integrated system yet. We will do that once get the funding, optimistically in 2003. We have the processes ready." _______________________________________________________________________ eric wolbrom, CISSP Safe Harbor Technologies President & CIO 190 Goldens Bridge Ct. Voice 914.767.9090 ext. 6000 Katonah, NY 10536 Fax 914.767.3911 http://www.shtech.net _______________________________________________________________________ - ISN is currently hosted by Attrition.org To unsubscribe email majordomoat_private with 'unsubscribe isn' in the BODY of the mail.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Fri Nov 08 2002 - 04:20:29 PST