NSA CIO Pursues Intelligence-Sharing Architecture

The CIO of the National Security Agency is focusing on IT architecture and what he calls a "cloud-centric" approach in the agency's effort to improve its information sharing with other intelligence agencies. "Some people say we've just got to get some better tools. Well, tools come and tools go," said NSA CIO Lonny Anderson in an interview with InformationWeek at the agency's National Cryptologic Museum in Fort Meade, Md. "The key is architecture. You build an architecture, then it doesn't matter that tools come and go. There's no doubt in my mind that when we connect architectures, we'll never look back."

In its dual mission of signals intelligence (intercepting foreign communications and electronic signals) and securing the military's IT systems, NSA is a sophisticated IT organization. As head of NSA's technology directorate, Anderson works closely with NSA director Gen. Keith Alexander, with whom Anderson served in the Army before retiring in 2001. NSA, like other organizations within the 17-member U.S. Intelligence Community (IC), has redoubled its efforts at information sharing with other intelligence agencies following the attempted bombing of a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on Dec. 25, 2009.

Anderson said he believes that technology teams in the IC can foster collaboration by working together on IT architecture and infrastructure. One such project, called "the Quad," is a joint initiative between NSA, the National Reconnaissance Office, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, and the Defense Intelligence Agency to develop a shared development environment. A first step, underway now, is development of a role-based identity management framework to provide database access across agency lines. Developers are being trained to use the new framework.