Navy to transition to enterprise IT services approach

The Navy will move away from an isolated information technology system to one that operates across different networks, systems and units.

The transition to an enterprise IT services approach will reduce waste and duplication, increase data availability, accelerate productivity and reduce cyber risk, according to a memo from the Navy’s chief information officer released last week.

“The intent of enterprise IT services is to operate across more than one network, security domain, system, or organizational unit,” the memo states.

Enterprise IT services apply technology that enables the reuse of use cases every time those use cases come up, according to the memo.

These IT services will improve the Navy’s interoperability, data sharing and “increase agility and speed in the development, delivery, and management of capability to the warfighter,” the memo states.

Having common models to organize and share data is going to be very important for the Navy to ensure interoperability and trustworthy data, Tom Sasala, the Navy’s chief data officer, said last week at the online Billington CyberSecurity Summit.

“We need to rapidly, especially in the tactical environment, get to an environment whereas things change, the data environment gets updated and that information gets pushed to the people who need to see it,” Sasala said.

Within 60 days of the release of the memo, the Navy’s chief technology officer will lead a forum to define the processes required for the adoption of enterprise IT services, the memo states.