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GCN Home > 01/07/08 issue

Karen Evans | The straight story on OMB’s Internet connection policy

GCN Interview: OMB’s administrator for e-government and IT clarifies the goals of the Trusted Internet Connections initiative

By Joab Jackson and Jason Miller

In November, the Office of Management and Budget announced a plan to cut federal agencies’ external connectivity points from about 1,000 to 50, including Internet connections (GCN.com, Quickfind 888). In the first half of this year, agencies must work together to establish a select number of shared-services nodes.

By reducing the number of gateways, the government could better protect against security threats. But like any sweeping plan, the Trusted Internet Connections initiative has spawned misunderstanding. Some employees thought OMB wanted to cut their Internet access or take agency Web sites off-line. Karen Evans, OMB’s administrator for e-government and information technology, met with editors from GCN and its affiliate publication, Federal Computer Week, to clarify TIC’s goals.
GCN: THERE ARE LOTS OF MISPERCEPTIONS OUT THERE. HOW WILL THE INITIATIVE AFFECT AGENCIES AND THEIR EMPLOYEES?
Evans: You shouldn’t notice it. Folks who are managing these services — not the telecommunications services, but the online services like Web sites — should not notice any difference. Most of this work will be done behind the scenes, and it could be as simple as changing an entry in a table to reroute traffic to a different place.

Where this really comes into play is how the department delivers its telecommunications services. Say, for example, the department has a very decentralized approach — it is only managing Washington, D.C., telecommunications.

It may have 10 or 15 regional offices and allow those regional offices to do their own telecommunications. That’s where this initiative is going to impact the department, because we’re going to rely on the department to know its inventory and to decide how it will manage it. They will have to come up with a plan for how they are going to either collapse [their network] or partner with another agency. So this initiative is saying you have to know what you own in order to manage the risk to an acceptable level.

Everybody is focused on the 50, asking if 50 is enough. We know that 1,000 is too many, but we haven’t necessarily said that 50 is the cutoff. What we’re figuring is, at a minimum, it is probably around 50. Even if you did two per department it comes to around 50.

More news on related topics: Communications / Networks, IT Security, Enterprise Architecture, IPv6, IT Management, Web Strategies



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