During an industry day with vendors, the director of the Defense Information Systems Agency's Operational Support Systems (OSS) division outlined the five technological advancements driving how the agency assesses and buys new capabilities.

These "are technology drivers in the industry that we are desperately trying to take advantage of," said James Travis, OSS director.

1. Convergence

As technology continues to improve at a breakneck pace, DISA and the rest of government must be buying equipment and solutions with future integration in mind, Travis said.

First, he pointed to the increase in the number and quality of sensors being added to systems, some of which can be programmed to manage themselves in-environment.

"We need to make sure that when we acquire the next generation of equipment, we carefully consider how the manufacturers have already created within those devices the ability to manage themselves," Travis said.

Secondly, the agency needs to look at companies that integrate emerging technologies into their solutions and avoid buying capabilities piecemeal.

2. Enterprise

Those same principles should be applied to the entire enterprise, as well — think holistically and look toward the future.

"We don't need to keep buying the same thing over and over again," Travis said. "Maybe the solution that I deploy for ticketing might be sufficient for the department … We don't necessarily need to have multiple instantiations of essentially the same capability."

Planning procurement with the entire enterprise in mind can lead to savings through bulk pricing, as well as lowering overhead costs around requirement testing, like baseline security controls.

"The bottom line:, I have to make sure when I buy something it can scale ultimately to the entire department," he said. "Or if it can't, we should know that."

3. DevOps

The term gets thrown around a lot in D.C., often with different meanings. For Travis, DevOps is the coordination between operators, solutions engineers, cyber assurance team and development team throughout the process.

"Too often we get to the end of the line and find out we have to STIG [security technical implementation guides] something," Travis said. "We need to find a way to grow those capabilities over time in conjunction with our users and our operators."

4. Mobility

While DevOps incorporates users and subject experts in the process to ensure basic capabilities are met, training users on how to operate those capabilities can be far more difficult and time-consuming. With that in mind, Travis took the opportunity to coin a new buzzword: appification.

"When you get an app, you don't go to classes on apps," he said. "You just take it out of the box and start using it."

Travis cited an example from his own life in which, while refereeing an outdoor soccer game, he was able to schedule the match around weather reports read off his smartphone.

"Where were the weather persons in that conversation? There weren't any," he said. "So when I talk about appification, I talk about taking the capabilities we have and finding ways to eliminate some of the middle persons … who become freed up to do other high-value-added solutions. We're finding ways to automate everything but leadership."

5. Cloud

Cloud is one area where OSS might not be ready to go fully commercial, just yet.

"Because of the unbelievably high availability requirements we have, it's very imprudent for us to deploy the operations support system — most of it — into a commercial cloud," Travis said.

While commercial opportunities might not be able to meet some operational needs, Travis said he is looking to the future when those options are more realistic and could help solve some very real issues.

For commercial solutions to be feasible, vendors would need to be able to provide 100 percent uptime and accessibility — a metric few could achieve at this time.

"When it comes to operational support systems — especially for privileged management and those kinds of solutions — I need to design stuff that never fails," he said. "We — with our mission partners — have to look for unbelievably highly reliable solutions. Not for everything but for those most critical components."

MORE:  See our complete DISA Forecast to Industry Show Reporter.

Aaron Boyd is an awarding-winning journalist currently serving as editor of Federal Times — a Washington, D.C. institution covering federal workforce and contracting for more than 50 years — and Fifth Domain — a news and information hub focused on cybersecurity and cyberwar from a civilian, military and international perspective.

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