In the private sector, competition requires businesses to be better, faster and cheaper. While the government rarely lives by that same mantra, it is starting to do so by leveraging private industry research and development and enabling rapid acquisition with security built-in, said Lee Schulz, chief of integration and liaison activities for the Army cyber directorate.

"Our acquisition cycles take too long. Our accreditation cycles take too long," Schulz said while speaking at an AFCEA Belvoir conference March 30. 

"There are changes afoot with [certification and accreditation] and it is our intention to shorten that lead time...and manage and mitigate that lead cycle which we are living and breathing day to day," he added.

At the conference, Schulz revealed a newly proposed cyber directorate organizational structure (see chart). The proposed model includes the creation of two new offices: A business transformation office and a strategic integrator office.

The improved integration of military IT is meant to improve governance, certification and accreditation, and approved product lists--three of Schulz's goals for transformation.

Schulz said he is working with Defense Information Systems Agency and the Office of the Secretary of Defense to improve reciprocity in the certification process. Typically, when one branch has a widget, which resembles a widget at a sister service, they are reluctant to share them because they're accredited differently.

"We get to this parochial mentality of 'my network.' And it's not. It's not the Army's; it's not the Air Force's; it's not the Navy's. It's all of ours. And so the risk of one is the risk of all," said Schulz.

Schulz says they're not doing things in a vacuum. They're looking outside the office better collaborate and influence information technology requirements, identify and examine emerging technology, and facilitate new technology insertion.

"We're going to try to help [program managers] plug in these pieces at the right time and the right place," Schulz said. "We're changing the culture--a culture that's been allowed to sit out there for a number of years."

Schulz has a larger goal, too: That the changes happening in CIO/G6 influence other government agencies, and then lead to the education and protection of the average American Internet user. "It's a big dream," he acknowledged.

For more:
- see FierceGovernmentIT coverage from the AFCEA Belvoir conference.

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