The U.S. Defense Department’s Global Information Grid (GIG) faces several challenges that could imperil its implementation, according to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report. The department is staking a considerable part of its future on the GIG, and key systems such as the U.S. Army’s Future Combat Systems will depend heavily on the GIG’s success, the report notes. Any of these challenges, which include operational, technical and management issues, could threaten the effectiveness of the GIG. Many of them have not been overcome in smaller scale efforts, and they will require significant changes in the Defense Department’s culture.
Foremost among the report’s warnings is that the department does not know fully how it will meet GIG objectives. The report notes that, for example, the department does not know which investments should take priority over others, and the department lacks a means for assessing overall GIG progress in terms of enhancing and transforming military operations. “Until the Defense Department implements an investment and oversight strategy for the GIG as a whole, it is at risk of making investments that do not fit the Defense Department’s vision for the future,” the report states.
The GAO report, which was presented to Congress on July 28, emphasizes that the office is not offering recommendations to the GIG program yet. This report addresses current challenges, and the GAO stresses that it will continue to assess how the Defense Department is addressing those challenges and will monitor the progress of key acquisitions.
Among the areas where the department faces risks is data protection within the thousands of systems that will be integrated into the network, the report states. Technical challenges for developing new networking and network management capabilities are considerable, especially for supporting mobile, integrated communications. These challenges include developing new technologies and advancing them on schedule, and ensuring common agreement on technical as well as information assurance standards and requirements. The GAO credits the Defense Department with recognizing these challenges and striving to address them. However, the report observes that it is still too early to assess how successful that effort will be.
Operational challenges include deciding when, how and how much information should be posted on the network and used; establishing rules to ensure that the GIG can work as intended without reducing benefits of flexible and dynamic information sharing; and convincing data owners of the value of sharing data with a broader audience and trusting the network enough to post data.
Among the management and investment challenges is the need to decide which capabilities are affordable and which capabilities are not affordable or are not in line with the department’s vision for the GIG. The department must enforce these decisions among thousands of systems across the military services. And, the department must have the right representation in acquisition decisions.
The GAO GIG report can be found at
www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?gao-04-858.
