As chief technology officer and principal director for the Global Information Grid Enterprise Services Engineering Directorate, Mihelcic develops the agency’s technology strategy and oversees systems engineering programs within DISA.

Mihelcic is also helping lead an in-depth exploration of open-source software. He views it as a way to accelerate software development while cutting reuse costs and leveling the playing field among industry partners—big and small.

Defense Systems editor Dawn S. Onley talked with Mihelcic about his initiatives at DISA, how the agency is changing the perception within the services and agencies about what it offers, and how it’s dovetailing DISA technology with the Defense De­partment network- centric goals.

DEFENSE SYSTEMS: What is DISA’s overarching technical strategy for aligning programs and services with DOD’s transformation goals?
MIHELCIC: When I took over as CTO, I basically provided a governance function to make sure that we were not only technically sound but fed this net-centric process. There are regulations, policies and guidance on how to acquire IT capabilities. There are generally recognized and understood systems engineering processes to assure that complex IT systems and services are engineered properly. But there are no generally recognized processes for assessing the movement toward net-centric systems and identifying ways to progress further toward net-centric capabilities.

We have tried to identify ways, using the Net-Centric Checklist from the Office of the Secretary of Defense, to move programs and projects further toward net-centric outcomes. We’ve taken this and formalized it inside our lifecycle.

We developed a DISA net-centric strategy and review process. The strategy piece is what we hand out to our various programs, and the review process aligns a set of CTO-driven reviews of these programs. They are reviews that we do as part of the normal acquisition lifecycle reviews of programs.

The net-centric strategy attempts to point a program in the right direction and to focus the program more on net-centric outcomes than would have been true in the past. Again, there are no regulations, definitive policies or guidance that cause programs to go beyond following acquisition guidance and solid engineering processes to provide a user-required capability. The net-centric reviews are a way to introduce checkpoints in a program that are tied to major acquisition reviews, to assess how well the program is doing at moving toward net-centricity.

“It’s all about the information. This isn’t about boxes and wires; it’s about making information available to DOD.”

DEFENSE SYSTEMS: What’s driving DISA’s move to open-source software? How will you ensure security is built into the products?
MIHELCIC: I believe open-source software is a tsunami that will overtake software globally. Driving it is the Linux operating system, as well as the fact that open-source software has really been at the heart of the Internet since the beginning. Things like the Domain Name System server software—the Internet itself would not run without that piece of open-source software.

So when you type www.disa.mil into your Web browser, DNS automatically provides your computer with the most up-to-date IP address of the server that has the Web page you need. Without DNS, the Internet would not operate. Without the Berkeley Internet Name Domain, there would be no DNS.

Moving forward, my goal is for us to embrace open-source in our development. We will require our vendors to take all of the software they develop for us and place it in an open-source license so it will be available to everyone over time. Currently, if you’re a small company, it’s difficult to crack the marketplace because someone else owns the software and you can’t get access to it.

Open-source is going to be a model moving forward because it’s going to help accelerate the development of software and it will help us with software reuse in the DOD. With open-source, it’s easy to share and reuse software.

In some ways, open-source will enable us to enhance the security of software. With proprietary software, we have no insight as to how that software is built. With open-source, you can see the code. We’ll have complete visibility into the development process.

DEFENSE SYSTEMS: What are some of your goals in the coming year?
MIHELCIC: I want to support the vision of my boss:

• Number 1, it’s all about the information. This isn’t about boxes and wires; it’s about making information available to DOD.
• Number 2, we need to deliver that information to the edge of the network—not just to people in the command centers but to the warfighters in the field.
• Number 3, it’s about operational excellence. We are not just building the infrastructure but operating it in a professional
• Number 4, we must radically increase the speed with which we can deliver product to the field. Six months is basically the norm. With DISA, it’s more or less three times that: 18 months.
• Number 5, we have to ensure our books are clean and we’re accountable for our finances and costs.

Those are the elements of my boss’ vision. As CTO, I want to support them.

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