Intelligence agencies getting on board with IC ITE

Three years after the decision to consolidate their information technology systems, members of the intelligence community are now ready to begin adopting the IC Information Technology Enterprise, according to senior intelligence officials.

First envisioned in 2011, IC ITE seeks to provide improved integration, information sharing and security through the use of a cloud-based architecture. The initiative is expected to reduce the community’s annual IT spending by 20 percent in 2019.

Much of the foundation for the new architecture has been established in terms of who comprises service providers and consumers, according to Al Tarasiuk, CIO of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

“What we envisioned three years ago to begin to form this consolidated architecture, this shared mission platform for the community to use, is in place,” he said at the Intelligence and National Security Summit on Sept. 18.

For instance, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency will be service providers for IC ITE’s desktop and enterprise management. Meanwhile, the CIA and the National Security Agency will be responsible for portions of the cloud and identification, authorization and authentication services. The National Reconnaissance Office will be the initiative’s networks requirements and engineering service provider and ODNI will manage a security coordination center. 

Since Sept. 2011, more than 9,000 users have begun to use the IC common desktop and over 460 applications are now available for use, Tarasiuk said. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and Principal Deputy DNI Stephanie O’Sullivan have committed to staying through the current administration to make sure that IC ITE gets implemented.

The individual agencies are now working on adoption strategies for IC ITE and to scale IC ITE to the rest of the intelligence community.

“The biggest part of this now is the adoption which—if you lay out IC ITE in phases—we look at the foundation as phase one,” Tarasiuk said. “This is really the second phase, which is the agencies’ adoption of the services.”

From there, IC ITE will also be looking at improving enterprise management and consolidating and adding features such as identification, authorization and authentication services.

“Our enterprise management capabilities need to be scaled for the entire community—our networks will begin that path of consolidation in the new architecture,” he said. “We have to build in more tools on our clouds now. The capabilities need to be in for the analyst to actually start using [IC ITE] and making this a part of their daily process of doing work.”