'DISA First' to be replaced by Joint Information Environment, says Navy official

CHARLESTON, S.C.--"DISA First" may no longer be the watchword for Defense Department data center consolidation, said a Navy official May 23 during a conference on military adoption of open source software.

Rather than automatically look to the Defense Information System Agency for data center functionality, military services are instead developing a policy dubbed the Joint Information Environment under which the DoD would grant military services and DISA regional "franchises" to run data centers, said Brian Clingerman, an official with the office of chief of Naval operations.

All military departments have signed on to the concept, Clingerman said, describing the JIE as a "fundamental shift and change in how we buy IT infrastructure."

Regional data center franchises would be able to compete with each other for military business, Clingerman also said, citing DISA's ability to unilaterally raise prices as a failing of DISA First.

Under the JIE, military services should also be able to utilize commercial cloud services, Clingerman said, including classified data.

"We're going to put intelligence data on commercial servers," he said, adding that defense industrial base companies already keep classified data on private sector-owned servers.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article misidentified the Navy component Brian Clingerman works in. He in fact is an official with the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations. We regret the error.

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