DSCA Director's Blog

Here you will find thoughts and messages from the Director of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency and his staff.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Information Technology Progress at DSCA

The impact of Information Technology on our daily lives is everywhere. And, like the rest of the world, the security cooperation community depends on IT tools to sustain its business.

More than a decade ago, DSCA and the security community began efforts to upgrade our legacy case development, implementation and execution business systems. The goal was to replace the outdated systems used by Army, Navy, and Air Force security cooperation organizations. It was a significant effort that turned out to be more difficult than anyone anticipated. The outdated case execution systems are still in use and the case development, implementation and training execution modules of the Defense Security Assistance Management System (DSAMS) have continued to be enhanced for the security cooperation community.

We have restarted the journey with a program for case execution we call the Security Cooperation Enterprise Solution (SCES). We’re partnering with the Business Transformation Agency and the Military Departments to drive discipline, diligence and encourage openness and collaboration throughout the acquisition process. We’re now completing the requirements definition stage. Soon we’ll work to validate the requirements and conduct an analysis of alternatives.

It’s a game changer, with a different acquisition strategy than the past. In my first Blog, I mentioned security cooperation activities are surging at all levels of our government and that includes IT. It’s critical to note whatever we do, we need to be interoperable with the emerging Navy, Army, Air Force and Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) Enterprise Resource Program (ERP) business systems. There is a tremendous team working on this project and they deserve our thanks and appreciation. Streamlining our IT systems will affect our future for decades.

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