It's 11 A.M. in Fallujah and a commander photographs insurgents his squadron just nabbed following a pitched battle outside an Iraqi police station where an improvised explosive devise went off. Based on the images, he wants to get intelligence feedback on the captured insurgents and the bomb mechanism.

In Washington, it's 3 a.m. Not all that long ago, it was probable that the commander's photos and request would have sat idle for several hours-until headquarters staff woke up-and different parties moved them along the command chain, through to CIA analysts, and back out to the field again or to others within the Defense Department who were seeking more details about the area in Fallujah where the battle took place.

The Defense Information Systems Agency aims to make such data exchanges occur closer to real time with the Content Staging/Information Dissemination Management (CS/IDM) project-and for information to continue to be available by users long after an immediate need passes.

EVERYONE'S A STAKEHOLDER
"The concept is that everyone is an information producer and everyone is an information consumer," says Jack R. Eller, chief of the Product Lines Division for DISA's Net-Centric Enterprise Services (NCES) Program.

But that's a relatively new concept. When it comes to information in DOD and the government's intelligence agencies, it's sometimes like the old adage, "water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink." The CS/IDM team expects that its program, initially started as an advanced concept technology demonstration in 1998, will make information from many Defense and intelligence sources easy to search, find and retrieve, Eller says. Defense is committed to the program-it spent $9.5 million on it in fiscal 2005 and expects to allot about $9 million this year.

The CS/IDM initiative reflects an overall shift in the way Defense handles its information stores, Eller says. In the past, the department doled out data on a need-to-know basis-typically from single sources located in the United States. But today, "information producers are everywhere and everybody," he says, so that approach creates a serious time lag for end users who need data immediately to act.

For instance, during recent fighting along the Ivory Coast, the commander of a U.S. ship needed information about ports available for docking and the location of airfields. He knew the information was stored on a hard drive at the U.S. Army Airfield in Stuttgart, Germany, but try as he might, he at first couldn't locate the exact data he needed.

"Finding that information was like trying to find a particular book at the base: You know it's there somewhere," Eller says. But using CS/IDM, the commander was able to find the exact data he needed. The program runs at 38 commands around the world and can be accessed on four networks: NIPRnet (Non-classified IP Router Network), SIPRnet (Secret IP Router Network), JWICS (Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System) and GCCS-K (Global Command and Control System-Korea).

To use CS/IDM, each command has its own server, but the goal is to make the program's core services available as an NCES application for the Global Information Grid. NCES is a group of nine enterprise functions that DISA and the services have been developing to run across the GIG, ranging from collaboration and discovery to mediation and security.

As an NCES app, CS/IDM would let any user anywhere upload and download data via Web browser-ultimately even using handheld platforms such as personal digital assistants and cell phones. "There is so much need within DOD for these types of services," Eller says.

GOING GLOBAL
Preparation for expansion of the program began in 2004, when DISA began rolling out CS/IDM at the department's Defense enterprise computing centers. So far, it has deployed the program at centers, or DECCs, in Honolulu; Columbus, Ohio; and Stuttgart, Germany.

As the service becomes available at the enterprise level, DOD users will be able to search the entire Defense spectrum in addition to specific holdings. DISA has been working with individual programs to set up the metatagging that makes the global searches possible. "We now have implemented a federated search capability that brings together the holdings of people who have never done business together before, like the State Department, the Joint Explosive Ordinance Disposal and other government agencies-all in the name of information sharing," Eller says.

Through GIG, federated searches have become available to all authorized users of NCES, which means that almost 8 million information products are on tap for retrieval.

One early adopter of CS/IDM, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, began in October 2003 identifying particular types of information its customers wanted and pushing that data to them on a regular basis, says Brian Hackworth, supervisor and project manager at NGA's Enterprise Operations Directorate in St. Louis.

Hackworth describes the system as comparable to Amazon.com in that NGA creates a profile for each user based on geospatial information needs, then automatically pushes data to the user as it becomes available.

Besides making its own data instantly available to customers, NGA uses CS/IDM to search and post links to data holdings from other Defense sources, "so customers do not have to go to 20 places in order to gather all this information," Hackworth says. NGA is not alone in how it uses CS/IDM. Central Command uses the program to make files available to its personnel as they become available, says Lt. Cmdr. Michael Torres, manager of the Theater Information Management Branch of the CENTCOM Directorate of Operations at MacDill Air Force Base, Fla. "It really facilitates the discovery of information."

A major CS/IDM benefit comes from the ability to quickly replicate information at multiple locations, Torres says. For example, CENTCOM has facilities in two locations-at MacDill in Tampa, Fla., and in the Persian Gulf state of Qatar-each of which maintains its own Web site. In the past the two sites have been maintained separately, which meant that users supported by the two locations didn't always have access to the same information. CENTCOM uses CS/IDM's replication ability to mirror data for the two sites. Information updated in Tampa, Torres says, automatically updates in Qatar as well.

HURDLES AHEAD
There are some barriers to widespread use of the program. For one thing, not everyone is comfortable using the technology, says Jim Mohan, a public affairs officer for NGA. "Hopefully, as more net-savvy people come on, this will become second nature to everybody." There's also some reticence to share information so broadly. "It's a relatively new concept-knowledge management and information sharing within Defense as an organization," Eller adds. In the end, the effectiveness of CS/IDM ultimately depends on each Defense organization, he says-on how well each maintains its own data, reviews what to make available and discards or updates irrelevant and outdated information.

To get a quick fix on the search components of CS/IDM, enter 102 in the Quickfind search box at the top of this story.

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