DISA Conducts Forecast to Industry

The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) conducted its Forecast to Industry event Friday, Aug. 9, at DISA Headquarters. This is an annual event, hosted by the agency for industry representatives.

DISA Director Air Force Lt Gen Ronnie D. Hawkins Jr. welcomes attendees to DISA's Forecast to Industry event.

The purpose of the event was to outline the way ahead for DISA and to provide insight into opportunities for industry to partner with DISA to help the agency achieve its objectives. In addition to presentations by several DISA senior leaders, the event provided small business and large business representatives the chance to network with one another and with DISA leaders, program managers, and subject matter experts during scheduled networking sessions.

Approximately 400 participants attended in-person at DISA Headquarters and hundreds more watched via live streaming video. The agency also tweeted the event in real time using #DISAForecast.

Lt Gen Ronnie D. Hawkins Jr., DISA director, opened the event by welcoming the participants and presented a video that showed some of the 15,000 DISA military, civilians, and contractors throughout the world performing a range of DISA functions and services. The director emphasized the closing frame of the video, reiterating that at DISA "our people are our strength."

Hawkins discussed some challenges in developing the Joint Information Environment (JIE) and DISA's areas of emphasis for the next year.

"We have a tough challenge ahead of us as we move to JIE," said Hawkins. "We must develop JIE to secure our cyber infrastructure and to cut costs." It is as much a cultural challenge as technological as we shift from organization-based management to an enterprise environment, he said. "We have work to do."

The director talked about DISA's responsibility for almost all of the Department of Defense (DoD) Information Network (DoDIN) and said the DoDIN is more than the unclassified (NIPR) and classified (SIPR) networks. DoDIN also includes other network services, enterprise services, global applications, transport, and single-purpose networks.

Hawkins said the participants could expect from DISA in the next year "a greater emphasis on efficiency and savings from enterprise solutions." DISA will "pivot on delivery of capabilities and technologies in sprints" measured in months, not years. The agency will "accentuate acquisition agility and focus on Better Buying Power (a DoD initiative)." DISA will "mature the JIE" with a focus on our coalition partners.

Director of Procurement and Chief of the Defense Information Technology Contracting Organization Kathleen Miller highlighted the importance of having a continued dialog between DISA and industry to build the best solutions to support the mission.

Kathleen Miller, director of the Procurement Directorate (PLD) and the chief of the Defense Information Technology Contracting Organization (DITCO), followed Hawkins and pointed out that her organization "does more than provide procurement support to DISA, we also support other organizations in DoD." She said almost 50 percent of the PLD/DITCO workload was for other DoD components.

Sharon Jones, director of the Office of Small Business Programs, briefed on small business contracting vehicles and creating partnerships with large businesses. She mentioned that DISA has achieved its overall small business goals for two consecutive years.

Dr. Jennifer Carter, DISA's component acquisition executive, discussed information technology acquisition trends and the way ahead with industry, the DoD mobility concept and end-to-end vision, unified capabilities (UC) and challenges, DISA's role as the enterprise cloud service broker, and contracting opportunities.

Network Services provides the infrastructure and frameworks for the enterprise network, said Cindy Moran, director of Network Services.

"We work in four areas, and all of them are foundational to the enterprise network," Moran said. The four areas are transport, gateway services, JIE, and UC. She also talked about the DoD Teleport Program and about connecting via task orders to existing Network Services contracts.

Dave Bennett, chief information officer and director of Enterprise Services, discussed the convergence of multiple missions from the Office of the Chief Information Officer and Enterprise Services Directorate, the enterprise cloud services portfolio, data center consolidation for JIE and the changing face of the Defense Enterprise Computing Centers (DECCs) as they transition to "core data centers," and contracting opportunities.

Mark Orndorff, DISA's chief information assurance executive and the program executive for mission assurance and network operations, shared DISA's strategy for DoD cybersecurity, big data analytics, JIE single security architecture, next steps for mission assurance, and contracting opportunities.

During the event's networking sessions, attendees interacted with agency leadership and subject matter experts to learn about DISA's services and solutions, provide feedback, and stimulate a continuing dialogue for the Forecast to Industry and afterward.

Miller closed the forum with a discussion of DITCO procurement actions supporting non-DISA organizations.

The event was applauded by many industry representatives.

"I've been working with DISA for 19 years, and this was the best Forecast to Industry day I've seen," said Gerry Robbins, director of DoD business development for NJVC LLC.

"This event shows that DISA treats industry as a valued partner," said Heather Summers, account executive at NetCentrics Corp. "The networking time with senior leadership and subject matter experts was generous. The streaming video enabled more people to attend and (demonstrated that the event) was truly open to industry."