The Department of Defense's initial forays into mobility were somewhat limited — unclassified information only, custom-built for military-grade users and a marked divide from commercially available technology. That's rapidly changing as Pentagon leaders are looking to integrate mobility to empower everyone from soldiers on the ground to decision-makers in the E-ring.
At the Defense Information Systems Agency, the DoD mobility unclassified capability — which includes Android and iOS devices — is quickly approaching some 30,000 users, with an additional 1,000 users onboarding per week on average, according to Kim Rice, DISA's DoD mobility portfolio manager. The classified version is picking up speed as well, on track for 3,000 users in the coming months, and a top-secret mobile device is in the works.
"Some of the areas that we've been moving out on are probably the highest visibility areas for us, such as deploying the current [DoD Mobility Classified Capability-Secret, or DMCC-S], which has been pretty big for the department in terms of the ability to replace end-of-life devices on the secret side," such as the SME-PED, Rice said. "We're in formal production of the capability and swapping out pilot devices, and we've been getting really good response from customers using it, helping with operational burden … so that's a big deal on the secret side."
Behind the devices themselves DISA also is making changes to the mobile device management system (MDM), the platform used to manage mobile capabilities within the infrastructure. DISA awarded its first MDM contract two years ago, and leaders are incorporating lessons learned into the MDM's operations, as well as planning ahead for the next acquisition of MDM services.
DISA officials are updating operating systems, taking advantage of commercial capabilities and enhancements being made available through MobileIron, the company providing MDM services under the contract.
"A big one is the management console. When we first started fielding MobileIron in 2014, there was a requirement for a tiered management structure that the commercial product didn't offer," said Dave Sanfield, deputy mobility program manager. "So our developer had to create [those functions], which added pieces to the architecture. But over the past 18 months, those capabilities have become part of the commercial product, and we've been able to move over to that — giving us significant cost savings."
In 2013 DISA awarded the $16 million MDM contract to Digital Management Inc., an agreement that MobileIron was part of as a subcontractor. The original agreement was for one year with four six-month option periods.
That means a recompete is quickly approaching, which Rice and Sanfield said DISA is already working on.
"We're finalizing the requirements package and the acquisition strategy, not only for the MDM recompete but really for the program at large to try to leverage lessons learned out of the current MDM contract," Rice said. "The final option for the current contract expires in July of next year; there will be a released recompeted effort, but right now we're working through whether it will be in the same scope or if we will change that approach slightly."
There are plenty of those lessons learned spanning the mobility efforts from more than two years of the contract deliverables and the acquisition strategy overall, Rice noted.
"We have been pulling together the experiences we've had in [Digital Management Inc.] deliverables, MDM operations and management, customer feedback on both the classified and unclassified domains and the evolving and emerging technology that industry partners have shared with us," Rice said. "That's the state of where the department is in trying to mobile-enable the workforce. There are a lot of lessons learned because this is really the first DoD mobile offering ... a lot has changed and we've learned a lot from the pilot and the initial deployments. Not all of our assumptions panned out."
RELATED: LTG Alan Lynn, DISA director and JFHQ-DODIN commander, will appear as a keynote speaker for C4ISR & Networks and Federal Times' CyberCon 2015, a forum to discuss how to secure defense and federal networks. Join us Nov. 18 at the Ritz Carlton in Pentagon City, Virginia.
