Defense Technical Information Center
Abstract
The Defense Technical Information Center’s (DTIC) unique mission is to aggregate and fuse science and technology data to provide rapid, accurate, and reliable knowledge to researchers and developers of the next generation of technologies needed to assure our national security. DTIC, a DoD Field Activity, is the DoD’s singular executive agent and designated source for DoD-funded scientific, technical, engineering, and industry-related information. DTIC also operates DoD Information Analysis Centers (IACs) focused on Defense Systems, Cyber Security and Information Systems, and Homeland Defense and Security. Each year, DoD invests over $12.0 Billion in research, development and procurement of advanced technologies needed to defend our nation. DTIC preserves the fruits of these costly labors for reuse across the enterprise. As an efficient and cost-effective steward of technical information, DTIC provides nearly instantaneous answers to researchers seeking state-of-the-art data relevant to their projects. DTIC regularly prevents duplication of experiments, tests, and prototyping activities because researchers can see what has already been done in their field of effort, even if prior research resulted in a dead end. Their work can pick up from the point of most recent results. Using DTIC-created forums, researchers, Warfighters, and industry partners can also rapidly collaborate and connect across the DoD research and engineering (R&E) enterprise. Finally, DTIC provides a department-level map of R&D activity. This map gives decision-makers insight into current and past research, highlighting where progress is being made and by whom. Through the preservation and sharing of the results of billions of dollars of past DoD investments, DTIC increases the return on past investments and accelerates current efforts, saving the Department precious time and dollars. Through its collaboration tools and outreach to the R&E community, DTIC connects researchers across the lab enterprise, to include researchers and engineers, Warfighters and DoD’s industry partners. DTIC’s strategic themes center on customer focus, innovation, operational excellence, and strategic partnering. In support of these themes, DTIC’s organizational efforts are focused on the following priority areas: 1) Search: Develop new algorithms that enable our users to quickly discover useful information and to ensure we present the most relevant information. Expand and enhance our data collections to improve the quality and completeness of the data. 2) Collaboration: Provide collaboration platforms for the DoD science and technology community to work together on investments that efficiently deliver solutions to the Warfighter. 3) Access Identity: Strengthen methods of user authentication through the use of public key infrastructure (PKI) tokens, biometrics and other methods to grant access to recognized, trusted and authorized users. Protect intellectual property (IP) and industry proprietary data assets entrusted to DTIC’s stewardship (protect information access). 4) Data Fusion/Analysis: Gather information from multiple data sources and provide knowledge products that fuse the disparate data sets into a single view of the life cycle of research. Present an overarching picture of research investment that enables decision-makers to link multiple efforts with integrated capabilities (employ resources to highest priority efforts and coordinate efforts across Services). 5) Cyber Security: Continue to leverage state-of-the art technologies, processes and practices designed to protect DTIC networks, computers, programs and data from attack, damage or unauthorized access. 6) Data Center Optimization/Cloud: Migrate services to cloud providers to improve availability, redundancy, and mission flexibility; to reduce time to deliver new capabilities; to save costs; and to enhance cyber security. DTIC recognizes the need to accomplish its mission while increasing the value of its services and products in an environment of Department-wide budget reductions. DTIC has reduced its headquarter staffing, physical footprint, civilian personnel and support contractors. DTIC has restructured the IAC program, and continues to consolidate its data center. Despite reduced budgets, DTIC has taken on additional programs, to include its new role in leading the Department in efforts to provide public access to DoD-funded journal articles and research data and increase outreach to industry through DTIC’s Defense Innovation Marketplace. Moreover, DTIC activities promote citizen science. Citizen science mobilizes the public to engage in the scientific process and thereby address real-world problems. Citizen scientists identify research questions, collect and analyze data, interpret results, make new discoveries, develop technologies and applications, and solve complex problems. DTIC continues to ensure its activities are efficient and effective, meet users’ expectations, and employ industry best practices and standards, while protecting its wealth of information from cyber threats. DTIC's restructured Information Analysis Centers (IACs) drive innovation and technological development by anticipating and responding to the information needs of the defense and broader community. The IAC Program Office provides core funding, management and oversight of three IACs, which are chartered by DoD to collect, analyze, and disseminate worldwide scientific and technical information in specialized fields. The IAC multi-award task order contracts ensure that new research, analysis, and development builds on prior investments and puts to work the best practices of government, industry, and academia. The IAC approach was identified as a "best practice" by the Director of Defense Procurement and Acquisition Policy in a January 2015 memo wherein he promoted maximum use of the IAC contracts across DoD. The IACs are structured into three application areas: Cyber Security and Information Systems, Homeland Defense and Security, and Defense Systems. As part of the Department's acquisition improvement initiatives, the IAC multi-award contracts enhance competition, increase usage of small businesses, and reduce costs. For the last several years, competition inherent in the IAC model has produced savings of 17-25 percent over projected costs, delivering vetted technical expertise to address many of the complex challenges DoD faces. An independent assessment by the Center for Strategic and International Studies reported that the IACs improve affordability, productivity, and standardization within defense acquisition programs. Providing the acquisition enterprise access to thousands of industry subject matter experts, DTIC's IACs perform over $1.0 Billion of customer-funded research and prototyping annually. The results of the work are a rich source of new material in DTIC's information asset collections and are available to users across the Department (and other federal agencies, e.g., Department of Energy, Department of Homeland Security). This Program Element (PE) supports DTIC mission operations. DTIC focuses on three core mission areas (Collection, Dissemination and IACs) and purchases space and shared services (e.g., human resources (HR); financial management; contracting; IT security; communications; and civilian payroll services) from expert and efficient DoD providers.
Document Details
- Document Type
- R2 Budgetary Justification
- Publication Date
- Oct 01, 2018
- Source ID
- 0605801KA_6_0400_PB_2018
- Change Summary Explanation
- Specific changes to the FY 2018 program (a net increase of $8.641 Million from the previous FY 2018 PB Base) are outlined below: FY 2018 Program Changes: The Department added $9.055 Million to the FY 2018 DTIC program as a means of resetting the DTIC budget top-line, which had seen a general decline since FY 2011. Absent the requested increase, DTIC would be forced to cease most capability development and to limit efforts on cybersecurity. These constraints would translate to increased risk on the cybersecurity front and reduced search and retrieval effectiveness, i.e., DoD researchers would incur increased costs and delays in solving technology challenges related to fielding needed warfighting capabilities. The funding infusion enables DTIC to keep closer pace with the advance of the state of the art in the science and technology data collections, to refresh outdated and increasingly unsupportable infrastructure, to pursue strategic improvement in tools used by users to search and find needed information, and to begin DTIC’s migration to a cloud host. Marketplace realities force DTIC to refresh commercial-off-the-shelf technologies supporting information search, storage, and retrieval. These upgrades are driven by constant evolution of information technology and the reality that vendors enhance or discontinue products as a means of remaining competitive. This dynamic is not new. The eight previous search engines DTIC deployed, over two decades, have been discontinued by the manufacturer. In addition, user identity management continues to evolve, and DTIC must keep pace. In recent years, DTIC has added support for multiple variants of the government Public-Key Infrastructure card (CAC) used by DoD, other Federal Agencies, industry, and other commercial entities. In the future, we must be ready to accept other identification tokens and biometric identifiers. Finally, DTIC must find ways to support a growing variety of platforms, devices, and interfaces. Ten years ago, 99 percent of DTIC users were on Windows/IE desktop platform. Added funding will allow DTIC to deliver improved search and discovery tools, to simplify access and identity management while increasing cyber security, to provide access on our users’ platform of choice – expanding to deliver to mobile devices (tables and mobile devices), and to migrate to cloud hosting. Cloud hosting merits special mention because of its promise to allow DTIC professionals to move their focus from infrastructure maintenance to more strategic functions. Cloud hosting will enable DTIC to be more flexible and agile in meeting our mission objective and increase our ability to innovate. Use of cloud technologies to support COOP capabilities were delayed by DoD security concerns requiring policy changes for the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP). Revised FedRAMP guidance and vendor certification now allow DTIC to reconstitute this critical capability. The requested additional funding will allow increased collaboration with our partners, and allows further outreach and increased ability to educate and bring awareness to the importance of sharing their results with the community through DTIC. Funding also promotes increased attendance at scientific conferences and outreach to DoD laboratories, partnership with COCOM S&T staffs, etc., in DTIC’s primary mission to find, collect and ingest S&T data for the purpose of sharing with the larger community. New funding supports key initiatives to develop and implement new technologies. These include search and discovery infrastructure; IT COOP reconstitution; data center consolidation and transition to cloud computing; mobile technology; user access and identity management; Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) in support of the Executive Order 13556; Public Access to scientific data and publications, in compliance with the Executive Office of the President, Office of Science and Technology Policy; as well as efforts to address a rapidly changing and more sophisticated technological environment. While DTIC has been planning these initiatives, budget erosion and funding constraints have limited our ability to address these critical tasks. Without the Department’s FY 2018 funding increase, DTIC will be unable to accomplish these initiatives. The FY 2018 investment represents a small fraction of the Department’s research and development spending, and will lead to near- and long-term benefits as efficiencies in the information collection and dissemination processes are implemented. These DTIC initiatives strengthen DoD business practices and result in taxpayer savings. The FY 2018 funding increase supports the following DTIC programs/initiatives: - Search and Discovery Infrastructure: “Search” functionality is the primary way information is shared. DTIC’s funding shortfall over the past several years has reduced the effectiveness of our search. Given current funding levels, DTIC has maintained basic functionality, but has not been able to improve and incorporate new search technologies and user interfaces. This shortfall directly effects users. It makes them work harder to find the most relevant, applicable, and essential information in DTIC’s collections. In a practical sense, with the Department spending $12.0 Billion in science and technology funding per year, limited “search” capability drives up costs in the form of duplication of “search” effort, pursuing trails of approaches that have already shown to fail, and inability to find relevant research results. DTIC must invest in the latest “search” technologies to offer users a complete data picture of DoD-funded research results and reduce the expertise users must hold to find relevant information. - DTIC IT COOP Reconstitution: DTIC holds and manages over 4 million records in its collection. Funding enables DTIC to reconstitute its Continuity of Operations (COOP) systems/servers (mission-essential functions) within the 12-hour timeframe required by Department of Defense Directive 3020.26 if a catastrophic event were to take the primary system off-line. The investment lessens the risk associated with the extended loss of access to DoD-funded research data and the inability for DTIC to collect new research results. Funding supports the analysis of alternatives, system architecture, cyber risk management framework documentation/accreditation, system engineering, software development, testing, hardware procurement, software licenses, storage, and bandwidth. - Data Center Consolidation/Cloud Computing Transition: The Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative (FDCCI) directs the reduction in physical servers and the consolidation of data centers. DTIC has reduced the number of its physical servers by 60 percent and moved to a virtualized server environment. Outsourcing to the cloud will enable DTIC to focus more resources on our core mission--delivering information through innovative applications, rather than maintaining an IT platform. DTIC information services will become more flexible and innovative, shortening the gap between testing and implementation of DoD weapon systems. To operate effectively in cloud environments, DTIC must reengineer much of its information pipeline. The funding request supports the analysis of alternatives, system architecture, system engineering, cyber risk management, necessary architecture and software modifications, services costs (servers, storage, bandwidth, management, etc.), testing, and software licensing. - Mobile and Emerging Platform technology: DTIC serves a diverse audience. DoD users, industry partners, and academic researchers have moved from a traditional desktop Windows Internet Explorer (IE) environment to an array of devices (desktops, laptops, tablets, and mobile), operating systems, and browsers. To remain relevant, DTIC must ensure products and interfaces support these new devices. If new technology is not pursued, large portions of DTIC’s user community will be lost. FY 2018 funding supports the analysis of alternatives, metrics, software development, testing, hardware, licenses, cyber security, and Risk Management Framework (RMF)/accreditation. - Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI): In September 2016, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA, specifically the Information Security Oversight Office) released final guidance to execute the CUI effort throughout the Executive Branch. This guidance supported the President‘s Executive Order 13556, issued in November 2008, Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI). The EO directed the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) as the CUI Executive Agent to standardize the way the Executive Branch handles information (excluding information that is classified). Distribution of information outside of the DoD is only allowable when documents are marked to the new CUI standards, including categories that will require portion marking. The term “Controlled Unclassified Information” (“CUI”) will start being used by the Department in 2017, phasing out the term “For Official Use Only” (“FOUO”). As the Department’s unique central repository and distribution source for technical information, DTIC must modify their collection, storage, and distribution systems to recognize and properly handle new marking and distribution standards. Lacking establishment of these new systems and proper CUI marking, the DoD would lose much of its ability to share material with other Federal Government agencies, industry partners, and allies. Added funding supports the initiation of steps needed to support new CUI standards, namely: policy development, system requirements planning, cyber security assessments, software prototyping, and development of user training. - Public Access: The Executive Office of the President (EOP)/Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) issued a memorandum directing Federal agencies that spend more than $100 Million per year on research and development (R&D) to develop plans to support increased access to the results of research funded by the Federal government. As the Department’s central repository of DoD-funded technical information, DTIC was tasked with implementing the infrastructure to collect and disseminate journal articles, manuscripts and digital data that are the result of DoD-funded research. In FY 2017, DoD issued new policy to internal researchers to develop data management plans and submit authors’ manuscripts for journal articles. Funding allows DTIC to continue work with DoD Labs; educate and train researchers of new requirements; develop policy for external researchers (contracts and grants), submission compliance measures, and user facing tools; and evaluate and prototype the handling of data sets. Supporting data sets bring with it a range of complex issues caused by the variety of sciences and their output, and the sheer sizes that can grow to petabytes. FY 2018 Service Requirements Review Board (SRRB) Reduction: $.592 Million reduction to the DTIC program is the result of the Department’s recent service contract downsizing effort. FY 2018 Program Adjustments: reflects the net change of economic assumptions and/or pricing adjustments.
- Service Agency Name
- Defense Technical Information Center
Entities
Organizations
- Defense Technical Information Center
Related Documents
- Child Project: Defense Technical Information Center
- Child Accomplishment: Defense Technical Information Center
- Child Project: Information Analysis Centers
- Child Accomplishment: Information Analysis Centers