During an industry day with vendors, the director of the Defense Information Systems Agency’s Operational Support Systems (OSS) division outlined the five technological advancements driving how the agency assesses and buys new capabilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
These “are technology drivers in the industry that we are desperately trying to take advantage of,” said James Travis, OSS director.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
1. Convergence<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n As technology continues to improve at a breakneck pace, DISA and the rest of government must be <\/span>buying<\/span> equipment and solutions with future integration in mind, Travis said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n First, he pointed to the increase in the number and quality of sensors being added to systems, some of which can be programmed to manage themselves in-environment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “We need to make sure that when we acquire the next generation of equipment, we carefully consider how the manufacturers have already created within those devices the ability to manage themselves,” Travis said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Secondly, the agency needs to look at companies that integrate emerging technologies into their solutions and avoid buying capabilities piecemeal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 2. Enterprise<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Those same principles should be applied to the entire enterprise, as well \u2014 think holistically and look toward the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “We don’t need to keep buying the same thing over and over again,” Travis said. “Maybe the solution that I deploy for ticketing might be sufficient for the department \u2026 We don’t necessarily need to have multiple instantiations of essentially the same capability.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Planning procurement with the entire enterprise in mind can lead to savings through bulk pricing, as well as lowering overhead costs around requirement testing, like baseline security controls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “The bottom line:,<\/span> I have to make sure when I buy something it can scale ultimately to the entire department,” he said. “Or if it can’t, we should know that.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n 3. DevOps<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The term gets thrown around a lot in D.C., often with different meanings. For Travis, DevOps is the coordination between operators, solutions engineers, cyber assurance team and development team throughout the process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Too often we get to the end of the line and find out we have to STIG [security technical implementation guides] something,” Travis said. “We need to find a way to grow those capabilities over time in conjunction with our users and our operators.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n