DEFENSE SYSTEMS: Is the dual role you have, as CIO and systems director, typical of all intelligence agencies?
PFLUEGER: The National Security Agency just went to that model. But the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency does not use that model. It’s about 50-50. I find it very effective. One can say it’s a little bit of the fox guarding the hen house to set policies and then to also make sure they are operationalized, but it almost does you no good to set policy if no one is going to listen to you, which can happen anywhere, in a corporate environment or in DOD.

I’ve met a lot of CIOs who are very frustrated because they can’t operationalize what they want to do, so it’s a good role. I also have a third hat: I’m the General Defense Intelligence Program (GDIP) CIO, which is a subset of the National Intelligence Program. It’s a little unusual. You’re used to seeing CIOs who are heads of companies or agencies. But I also hold a title that controls the money, which is even more interesting. The director of DIA is the GDIP program manager, and I’m designated as his CIO to make sure all the GDIP dollars are spent appropriately. That’s how we got into this evolutionary transformational thing.

DEFENSE SYSTEMS: There’s been a lot of talk about DOD’s move to better share information, across not just the Defense agencies and services, but with intelligence agencies. How are you working toward this new environment?
PFLUEGER: DIA has a collection responsibility. We collect intelligence for what is called the Defense HUMINT system, or the human intelligence system. We have a whole directorate that does that. But probably about 80 percent of our work is as a consumer of data. So we are the ones that are always pushing hardest for the sharing.

But how do we do it for what we collect? We make sure that as the data is produced, it’s well-labeled, it’s well-marked, it’s written to the lowest classification, and the sources are removed from the data because our data increases in classification as it includes sources. And by sources we mean, “You know I talked to the Russian ambassador and he said this …” or “I talked to someone who is a spy for the U.S.” Once you remove the source, you can write it to a much lower classification.

So we are consciously doing that. We use what’s called a tear-line where you write the whole report at the highest possible level and then you write a summary of the report at a lower classification so you can just tear the bottom of the report off and have it at a lower classification. It’s an old paper thing. So we do all of those things to make sure all of our data is sharable. And then we work hard with other collectors or other agencies whose primary role is collection to try and help them understand our data needs.

DEFENSE SYSTEMS: What are your goals as CIO for the coming year?
PFLUEGER: The boss puts out a strategic plan. The boss’ goals are laid out in the strategic plan. Underneath that strategic plan, we write a strategic plan for general intelligence IT.

Ninety percent of the things in the strategic plan will only happen if we do our IT objectives correctly because intel is in the information biz. So if the IT plumbing’s not right, if the right data sources are not being tapped, if the right knowledge discovery applications aren’t happening, then we can’t meet the director’s strategic goals.

DEFENSE SYSTEMS: What is your biggest challenge?
PFLUEGER: Well, this year, and maybe it’s every year—and I agree with Defense CIO John Grimes on this—the hardest part is the people. You know technology is interesting, challenging, but, boy, I have a lot of smart folks willing to help me—for the right amount of money.

It’s really a culture because DOD is going through a transformation. We are transforming all the time in this agency to try to become an enterprise player, to try to build this net-centric information world. Some times it’s hard for folks who have sat in the same office for 20 years and who just want to go out and do procurements.

Some folks would still be running WordStar if you let them. But it’s a bright workforce, and they transform well. Sometimes it’s hard.

We have a real dichotomy in our workforce; we have no middle class in this agency. Prior to three years ago, we did very little hiring in this agency. So we had an aging workforce. But since the war on terrorism, we have done a significant amount of hiring and infused this agency with a very young workforce. So we have a senior and a very young workforce. Boy, does that make transformation hard: You motivate 25-year-olds a lot differently than you motivate 50-year-olds. So your transformation strategy is really complex.

But one good thing about an IT workforce is that they naturally stay up to date on technology. I can bring in one of my older guys, and he can whiz-bang you just as well as some kid I just hired out of Stanford.

Of course, you have your old dogs who don’t want to learn new tricks, but IT folks in general are better transformational folks than your normal political science majors.

DEFENSE SYSTEMS: Are there any other challenges facing DIA?
PFLUEGER: One challenge is probably a flatter, declining budget. It’s interesting because we believe we will be more efficient over time, but unfortunately the savings won’t kick in until 2008, 2009 and 2010. But our overseers would love to save money this year. So that’s a challenge. Also, we have this worldwide commitment—I have folks in Kabul; I have folks in Baghdad—this new war is harder.

A singular threat, like the Soviet Union, is really easy to stay focused on because you can sit right here and stare at them. But, man, when you have special operations forces going all over the world—from Singapore to Pakistan and Afghanistan and then something blows up in Spain, it’s a tough time to have a flat budget. For us, it would really be better if the budget were flat two years from now. But we’ll get there.

DEFENSE SYSTEMS: What is your IT budget?
PFLUEGER: Around $1 billion, and our enterprise has about 3,700 IT professionals—over half of them contractors. I don’t outsource any functions. I buy services and integrators who work in our workforce as partners. I’m not a big believer in fully outsourcing functions; the kind of thing that I just described, where we have to be able to function worldwide, makes it hard to contract our support.

DEFENSE SYSTEMS: What is your technology background?
PFLUEGER: I spent almost 20 years in Hawaii with the Pacific Command. There was a long sanity check when I got here. I have 36 years of federal service. I spent my first three years as an enlisted member of the Navy. I then spent 21 years as a Navy officer. I was an intel officer on the USS Blue Ridge and an intel officer on the USS Independence during the first Gulf War. If you go back in history, you’ll find out that the Independence was in Diego Garcia when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. So we were the first carrier in the Persian Gulf.

In between those things, the Navy thought I had some interest in technology and sent me to the Naval Postgraduate School where I got my master’s degree in computer science. Every other tour, around those operational intel tours, I did system things.

I was director of systems at Joint Intelligence Center–Pacific. As a member of the Senior Executive service, I was chief of intelligence systems for the PAC commander in chief. I also spent a year in industry at Science Applications International Corp. Then I was once again the director of systems for the JIC-Pacific, and then I came here as CIO.

I have never not worked in intel. I was either an intel operator or in IT support. I spent 32 years getting prepared for this job. Not knowing, not purposeful, because I had never spent one day inside the Pentagon or one day in Washington in those previous 32 years of federal service, other than occasional visits.

DEFENSE SYSTEMS: Is it a major challenge to recruit IT intelligence analysts?
PFLUEGER: I read my own strategic plan, and we still say that it’s a challenge. From a pure salary and bonus standpoint, we can’t compete. But based on what we built in this enterprise, if I was a GS-7 and was hired out of college, I’d want to come to DIA.

We have tremendous diversity in where our IT professionals work. We work with the newest technologies, and we’re right up to speed on voice over IP. We lead the world in desktop videoconferencing. We do it more than any other company, any other agency, anywhere. We run 250 worldwide videoconferences every day, everything from four-stars talking to four-stars, from four-stars talking to the president, and from E-6s talking to E-6s.

We’re a first-rate technology place. We have one of the most important missions in DOD. Certainly all-source analysis will be a key component in winning the war on terrorism. This place is all-source analysis as a primary mission.

So we have good technology, decent pay, good stability and some great locations if you want to relocate. We get 12 to 14 interns a year, and I would say we probably hire eight or nine. Those we don’t get are the kids from Stanford who still want to surf. So we’ve done really well. But we’re always looking, always working hard to recruit.

DEFENSE SYSTEMS: Can you talk a little bit about how this transition with the unified commands changes your mission? Would you now consider this a major new part of your mission?
PFLUEGER: That’s an interesting question. It is fundamentally a new mission. We always had a global responsibility to run JWICS, and we’ve always had the responsibility of helping the unified commands, but we never did it very well.

There’s a tendency to always stay focused on your agency. My vision from the war on terrorism just tears that apart. The war on terrorism doesn’t care about unified command lines. And this agency deploys to Baghdad; I think we had, at one time, 400 analysts in Baghdad. It was an acknowledgement that we’re a deploying agency. So it all kind of came together at the same time, and because of the size and focus of this workforce, it was very natural to take on this new role in managing this world of IT resources.

If you’re going to share data, you don’t want 85 different apps working against it. You want the five best. Well guess what, you could never get the 11 commands together to pick the five best, but I can pick the five best with the help of our analysts.

It is a new mission. It’s truly driven by probably what was right to do all along, but what was forced on us by our enemy. I’m saying that to win the global war on terrorism, we truly need to be a fully data-sharing, data-access, net-centric intelligence community. And building this enterprise leads us right into that.

DEFENSE SYSTEMS: How are you getting the 780 employees coming over from the unified command IT units to trust you?
PFLUEGER: This is almost a personal thing. I was hired here three years ago and I came from out there. I had spent all of my life in the unified commands and at the Joint Intelligence Center-Pacific. So when I came to this agency and began making changes, there was some inherent trust.

I was one of them, so there was some trust there. And you gain trust by being honest and forthright. There’s that old saying that integrity can only be given away and not taken away. We’re a big believer in doing this enterprise right. You’re right, these folks had to trust us for awhile and will have to trust us. But it’s working. And, as I promised everybody when we took over, nothing stopped working. You build on that. How you collapse an enterprise into five regional centers is to not even tell them. If they don’t notice their service is no longer under their desk but 500 miles away, it’ll be a self-supporting compression into an enterprise.

This new network-centric world, this new focus on data and knowledge, requires some new skills in the IT workforce. A new group of folks. We require apps, hardware and software, but what we really need in this network-centric, knowledge world is IT folks who know the functions of intelligence. I call them my 60-40, mostly IT but who also have a real understanding of the intelligence process and their customers.

DEFENSE SYSTEMS: I heard a senior military leader once say that in many regards, the enemy actually does data sharing better.
PFLUEGER: He probably exploits technology better than us, too, but he doesn’t have the same restrictions. He can go into an Internet cafe anywhere and, unfortunately because of international law, probably know he’s protected.

They do OK, but I tell you our collection capability still restricts his data sharing significantly. I just read an interesting article about the guy they let go from Gitmo, whose mission in life was to take Osama bin Laden’s telephone, talk on it and head to Pakistan because he knew it was being exploited. So, their ability to share data may now be just with paper and camels.

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