http://www.fcw.com/article103553-08-20-07-Web
By Sebastian Sprenger
August 20, 2007
Despite a growing number of attacks on military networks, securing
enough money for information assurance programs in the defense budgets
is still a hard sell at the Defense Department, said Linton Wells, who
recently left a senior post in the departments Office of the Chief
Information Officer.
Its been the source of enormous frustration, Wells said in an Aug. 6
interview, recounting some of the difficulties he faced during his
four-year tenure in the CIOs office.
Wells left the Pentagon in June to hold the positions of distinguished
research fellow and force transformation chair at the National Defense
University in Washington.
Convincing senior budget officials from the services to invest in
information assurance has been difficult because the results of money
spent in that area are difficult to measure, Wells said.
Its a tough audience, because what they say is, Show me how this $2
million you want to put on this is going to turn cell C17 from red to
yellow to green in 2011,? Wells said. And thats often a hard thing in
information assurance.
Wells said officials in charge of putting together the budget for the
security of DODs networks need better metrics for measuring return on
investment for information assurance programs.
We have not done a good job in making the case that a dollar spent here
is going to lead to a quantifiable increase there, he said.
John Garstka, a director in the forces transformation and resources
office under the auspices of the undersecretary of Defense for policy,
said quantifying the ROI for anything in the information domain is
difficult. Regarding information assurance programs especially, he said,
it only comes into play when theres a crisis.
Received on Tue Aug 21 00:26:13 2007