That’s right, as CIO and director of systems for DIA, Michael P. Pflueger has taken on the challenge of consolidating IT services for the department’s unified commands. The work began in October and is part of a DOD effort to standardize the systems approach at the commands and to improve the IT effectiveness.

Besides this work, Pflueger also must make sure the chief intelligence gathering done by his agency receives the systems support it needs. And that need is changing as Pentagon and DIA brass forge ahead on a plan to deliver credible intelligence data as close as possible to warfighters on the battlefield.

Defense Systems editor Dawn S. Onley talked with Pflueger, a career DOD systems and intelligence official, about his part in transforming intelligence sharing across the department, as well as with other federal agencies, and providing IT services to the unified commands.

DEFENSE SYSTEMS: What is your role as CIO for DIA?
PFLUEGER: I set the policies and enforce the policies. I do those things that a typical CIO would do—portfolio management, creation of the enterprise architecture and all those sort of things. I’m also the director of systems, so not only do I set the policies, I also operate all of the IT for the agency.

DEFENSE SYSTEMS: On Oct. 1, DIA took over IT operations and management of the unified commands. Where does that work stand?
PFLUEGER: It’s actually going quite well. We have one year where we just have titular control. Then on Oct. 1, 2006, everything moves to the DIA program and all the senior personnel become DIA civilians. So right now, the civilians at Pacific Command who work for me are still Navy civilians. But on Oct. 1 of this year, they become DIA civilians. Right now I order them, but they still get paid by the Navy. This fall, their money will come from DIA.

We’re right in the middle of taking over operation of the enterprise and of making that transition. It’s about 780 people being transitioned to DIA.

There are nine unified commands. So in our enterprise, there are now 11 entities for which we provide all of their IT support: the nine unified commands plus U.S. Forces Korea and the Multi-National Force–Iraq.

As you can imagine, it’s 11 cultures, with time zones spanning from Stuttgart to Seoul. Three of the commands are Air Force; two are Navy; and four are Army.

So culturally, we’re spending a whole year just operating them and building a consistent culture from Seoul to Baghdad to Stuttgart to across America. It’s an exciting time. Things are going well.

DEFENSE SYSTEMS: What is the nature of the work DIA will do?
PFLUEGER: Prior to last fall, the commands ran their own computer centers. They had people who were doing systems administration and program development, operating help desks and the like. We’ve formalized the stand-up of five regional service centers [in Colorado, Florida, Hawaii, Washington, D.C., and Germany]. Those five regional centers have people at about the GS-15 level who are in charge of operations.

What we’re also doing is operating all of the special compartmented information communications (SCI comms), servers, applications and data from our headquarters.

But as soon as you plan something that takes two years, of course, the playing field changes on you a little bit. The undersecretary of Defense for intelligence has been pressing a concept that calls for joint intelligence operations centers or commands, so while we’re doing this enterprise stuff to support all of the all-sourced analysts worldwide, at the same time the undersecretary and the DIA director are transforming what our joint intelligence centers (JICs) and joint analysis centers (JACs) do, to make them more operational. They are getting the collectors closer to analysts, closer to warfighters. So our customer base is transforming while we’re transforming.

DEFENSE SYSTEMS:: So why is DIA right for this role?
PFLUEGER: We have traditionally run the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System (JWICS), which is all of the Defense SCI comms. We’ve run that for the past 20 years.

So DIA has always had a worldwide mission. We also run something called HOCNET (Humint Operational Communications Network), which provides connectivity for all of our Defense human intelligence service folk around the world.

And JWICS is not only a network; it’s a major application for videoconferences. If you go to a unified command right now and you want to do a videoconference with somebody, you step into a JWICS studio.

Because the DIA director controls the money, and we have a large organization of 7,000 to 8,000 analysts here in D.C., we kind of naturally were the folks to be put in charge. Our mission is joint; our mission is all-source analysis. And, boy, that hits about 60 percent of the mission of all the JICs and JACs.

DEFENSE SYSTEMS: Would you say IT is a core mission of DIA?
PFLUEGER: I believe that if you asked the director, he would tell you IT is a core piece of the intelligence business. They live, die and breathe all-source analysis only because of their IT systems. And that’s not taking anything away from the brainpower of analysis.

This is a little bit different from a warfighter. Guess what, he can still point his plane this way or that if the computer doesn’t work. But without world-class connectivity, without world-class data access, intel analysis doesn’t happen.

To read more of the interview with Michael Pflueger, go to www.defensesystems.com and enter 103 in the Quickfind search box.

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