The Global Information Grid and Future Combat Systems get more attention, but the Defense Department's most influential systems effort in this decade could well be the emerging DOD Architectural Framework.

DODAF grew out of the late 1990s' drive to begin standardizing systems for command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. If DODAF proponents succeed at this long-range standardization effort, they will bring present and future C4ISR and other Defense systems into alignment with long-term goals for the GIG and network-centric FCS-as well as the governmentwide Federal Enterprise Architecture.

But how will DOD make it happen?

"You have to decompose those pretty presentation slides into data sets," says systems engineer Monica Farah-Stapleton, who heads the Architecture and Systems Engineering Office at the Army's Communications-Electronics Research, Development and Engineering Center at Fort Monmouth, N.J.

It's not quite like building the pyramids, she adds, but "sometimes it's hard to get people to think in similar ways. DODAF is an enabler for that."

The framework's 26 types of system views-generated within each organization-"all have relationships with other views as you move around the battlespace," Farah-Stapleton says. "Together they express the nodes, behaviors and protocols for system-of-systems interactions. They're a map that makes sense of related data," whether it belongs to the Army, Air Force or Navy.

Farah-Stapleton compared the job to preparing a tax return with a PC software package: "Tax software asks you many different kinds of questions and assumes that you have the background and documentation to answer correctly. To get it done, you need all your relevant records, forms and receipts. If you're audited, you must be able to put your hands on all your assumptions."

And, like a tax return, she says, "DODAF is only as good as its users. It's not just a checklist of requirements."

GET SMART
Users definitely need training, as well as software tools, adds Marty Johnson, program manager for command information superiority architectures in the Defense CIO's office.

"We just did a survey of the architect community," Johnson says. "Most of their DODAF training is being provided by the architecture tool vendors." The Defense Acquisition University, National Defense University, and Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association all offer DODAF training.

Johnson estimates the department now has several thousand students of DODAF principles, not all of them necessarily graduate systems engineers. But the need for trustworthy weapons systems means that "if you don't focus on quality, you get unreliable results," he says. "As DODAF gets updated from the first 2003 version, there's a big difference from C4ISR's emphasis on IT systems. Now the emphasis is on warfighting systems."

Responsibility for evolving DODAF lies with the department's deputy CIO and assistant secretary of Defense for networks and information integration. "It's a mandate across the department," Johnson says. "We develop architectures to support decision-making. All new acquisitions and processes have to have a certain number of architectural views developed for them."

There are other architectural frameworks in the federal government-for example, in the Treasury Department, he says, "but DODAF is unique because of its different views. Its strength is that it lets us communicate concepts, lets us focus on getting data and becoming more data-centric."

James D. Willis Jr., a retired Air Force officer and now vice president of Systems and Proposal Engineering Co. of Marshall, Va., describes DODAF as a tool for "defining customers' needs in terms of making decisions and spending money, whether they're in the services, Joint Staff or Office of the Secretary. Architecture is the glue that holds everything together."

His company and others train DODAF practitioners in systems functions such as navigation, interfaces and relationships. They show users how to "capture all of this information in a recognizable package," he says. Training can range from one overview day to up to two-week workshops; the cost averages about $1,000 per day. In the workshops, students work on an architectural project small enough to finish in the allotted time.

ENGINEERING PLUS
DODAF "isn't perfect, but it's better than what I had to deal with" in the Air Force, Willis says. "The most important thing is the systems engineering. If you don't know how to do good systems engineering, an architectural framework won't help much. Architecture is systems engineering at a higher level-refining the flow of information and the interfaces."

The framework uses common symbols that might not necessarily have been learned in standard systems courses, which necessitates ongoing training and product evaluation, says Alexander H. Levis, a George Mason University professor of computer engineering who served from 2001 to 2004 as Air Force chief scientist. Simply stated, "it's a painful process," Levis says, adding, "It's not rocket science, but you have to know what you're doing."

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