Millions of service members rely on the Defense Information Systems Agency for secure communications from bases in the United States to Afghanistan and beyond. Shouldering this responsibility is the DISA Mission Partner Engagement Office, an entity inside the agency that provides customers the necessary technology to achieve their individual missions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
DISA\u2019s work touches customers in 42 countries across 28 agencies, totaling around 2 million active service members and reservists, said Maj. Gen. Garrett Yee, the agency\u2019s assistant to the director. Its network processes about 300 terabytes of data daily and every month it takes about one billion defensive cyber operations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But before agency leaders created the engagement office in 2015, \u201cwe didn\u2019t have one specific organization that was strategically aligned to that primary focus,\u201d said Ted Lewis, the organization\u2019s acting chief.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Since then, the office has collaborated on a series of significant projects. Here are three areas that show how the office is using IT solutions to solve servicemembers\u2019 problems today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Defense Enterprise Email<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of DISA\u2019s most notable successes in recent years has been the transition to Defense Enterprise Email (DEE). Prior to the program, each installation ran its own email. That meant every time a serviceman got reassigned to a new base, they had to get a new email. Yee said that system was inefficient and made it difficult to track where people were stationed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis solution DISA implemented to eliminate the need for partners to procure manage and maintain their own email solutions by providing them a solution,\u201d said Marie Sakowicz, outreach support branch chief at DISA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt changed the way the Army was able to operate and save money,\u201d Yee told C4ISRNET in an exclusive interview. \u201cBecause now, instead of operating literally a hundred separate email servers, you\u2019re just getting it as a service from DISA.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Perhaps most importantly, the move saved the Army $600 million, Sakowicz said. Today, 1.8 million employees use the service and the DISA network moves over 38 million email messages every day, Yee said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Securing mobile phones<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n
DISA\u2019s program office has also helped ensure service leaders have unclassified and classified mobile phones for secure communications no matter where they are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The engagement office has a list of customers that includes the military services, the combatant commands, fourth estate agencies such as the Defense Logistics Agency, the Coast Guard and State Department. Now, DISA\u2019s engagement office is also offering its mobility services and secure network architecture to other civilian agencies for their communications, specifically the Department of Justice and Homeland Security, said Joe Brinker, DISA branch chief.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe need to be able to communicate securely is not exclusive to the Department of Defense so we are offering those capabilities with mission partners in the federal space as well,\u201d Brinker said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
DISA recently embarked on a pilot program to provide a platform to allow senior leaders to collaborate on projects \u201cwherever they are,\u201d said Susan Eaton, DISA\u2019s outreach branch chief said. She said that DISA has been hearing about the need for such a platform from service members for several years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAn admiral told me that he wants to be able to work in his office, pick up his computing device \u2013 whatever that device is, it doesn\u2019t matter \u2013 and be able to communicate and collaborate wherever they are,\u201d Eaton said. \u201cSo the pilot that DISA is working on will help bring that into our overall mobility capability set.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
DISA\u2019s engagement office, Eaton said, is going to take the lead on \u201cshaping\u201d that capability going forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThat\u2019s huge for anyone that has the need to talk in a secure way, but not be tied to an office environment,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
DISA supports about 145,000 mobile devices, such as cell phones or tablets, each month, Yee said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Move to the cloud<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n
For years, some military officials have expressed concerns about moving their data to the commercial cloud. But through DISA\u2019s MilCloud offering, more military organizations are taking advantage of cloud technology and hoping to save money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Eaton said DISA is helping Army Materiel Command migrate over 100 applications to the MilCloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThey don\u2019t have to stand up their own cloud capability and we\u2019ll be able to help them leverage an affordable solution,\u201d Eaton said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With partners throughout the world, DISA also has field offices around the globe to stay up to date.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThese teams are strategically positioned with the combatant commands to assist with DISA services, capabilities, and operations,\u201d Lewis said. \u201cThey give the [combatant commands] one place to go for information or to address any issues. The MPEO partners closely with these teams which provide local subject matter expertise or a conduit to reach subject matter experts at DISA headquarters. The MPEO also has liaisons performing a similar function for the military services and some of the DoD agencies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yee, who is months into his job at DISA, is in a unique position after having been a DISA customer for years during his career. His first opportunity to worth DISA came in 2011 during his time in Afghanistan and he relied heavily on DISA to connect to home stations back in the continental United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yee said that this allows him to bring in the perspective of the customer in DISA\u2019s operations and helps him improve DISA\u2019s interactions with the services.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI have the relationships from [being] a customer to be able to reach back to the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Marines to say \u2018hey, here\u2019s how we can potentially help you do better at what you\u2019re doing,\u201d Yee said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In order to fulfill its mission, Yee noted that DISA relies on a relationship with industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMuch of what we do relies heavily on our commercial partners and we can\u2019t underscore the importance of that partnership enough,\u201d Yee said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
DISA officials consider these three projects to be among the organization’s biggest successes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":38220,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":16,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[106,11,29,16,32],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3252],"class_list":["post-26675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-brief","category-disa","category-home","category-it-networks","category-newsletters"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"QRFL3F5IFJGQLMAGKKZYYBSRLM","arc_canonical_url":"\/it-networks\/2019\/11\/04\/3-ways-disa-solved-servicemembers-problems\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n