NetOps Agility (NOA)

The vision of NetOps is to transform existing and new capabilities into a force multiplier that enable DoD to fully employ the power of the GIG. The corresponding mission is to enable the DoD to employ a unified, agile, and adaptive GIG that is:

  • Mission Oriented - All information dependent processes necessary for a mission can be effectively supported
  • User Focused - Each user can access and obtain needed information from anywhere in the GIG in a timely manner; even when their needs are unanticipated
  • Globally Agile - Rapidly changing mission priorities can be met by dynamically maneuvering GIG resources

Like much of the GIG, NetOps today is delivered through organizational and functional stovepipes with varying degrees of interoperability and information access. Each of these stovepipes has its own, largely independent management capability, which seldom shares information regarding the status of its management domain. The Joint NetOps Concept of Operations has enabled the DoD to begin significantly improving how the GIG is operated and defended. For NetOps to effectively play its role in enabling net-centric operations, however, major challenges will have to be addressed:

  • GIG Situational Awareness must be available to Commanders
  • GIG Command and Control capabilities must support rapid decision making
  • NetOps operational policies must be clear and well integrated
  • NetOps must address the use of the electromagnetic spectrum
  • Standardized metrics must measure the health and mission readiness of the GIG
  • Capability development must be centrally governed
  • Greater coordination or synchronization is required among the many independent NetOps acquisition and fielding activities currently under way

Addressing these challenges will significantly improve the ability of the operators and defenders of the GIG to fully support ongoing warfighting and peacekeeping missions in an increasingly joint and multi-partner environment.

Enabling NetOps Agility

In order to deploy robust NetOps capabilities in operational environments spanning organizational and geographic boundaries, the Department must leverage new thinking, new processes, new policies and new levels of cooperation across Components. To meet this challenge, NOA has established the following near-term goals:

  • Enable timely and trusted information sharing of NetOps information across the enterprise - The fundamental premise is NetOps provides seamless, transparent flow of information (end-to-end) across the enterprise in response to user needs while ensuring GIG resources are provisioned and allocated in accordance with changing mission requirements. Achieving this goal is two fold:
    • Begin making NetOps data visible, accessible and understandable to all authorized users
    • NOA must manage and facilitate the visibility, accessibility, understandability, and sharing of all information within and across all DoD missions.
  • Unify GIG Command and Control - The DoD is increasingly dependent on the GIG as the primary means of enabling and delivering a wide variety of command and control (C2) to decision makers at all levels. Therefore it is critical the DoD transform the NetOps C2 construct by focusing on: increasing speed of command; implementing a decentralized policy based construct for integrated management of all GIG domains and establishing consistent and coordinated Techniques, Tactics and Procedures (TTPs) for net-centric NetOps. Doing so will result in a NetOps C2 construct that operates and defend the GIG as a unified, agile and adaptive enterprise capable of maneuvering critical data, employing GIG capabilities when and where they are needed most, and rapidly changing the GIG configuration to significantly enhance the value of the GIG.
  • Evolve and mature NOA capabilities in stride with the capability delivery increments of the Net-Centric capability portfolio - Time-phased NOA capability increments must be defined, developed and deployed in concert with the Net-Centric portfolio. In addition, NOA policy, governance structure, implementation plans and metrics must be created to achieve an effective transformation.

 

Principles and Business Rules 

The NOA principles and rules detailed on the next page have been established to provide a common foundation for tying together NetOps activities across the Department. While these guidelines are few in number, adherence to them across all applicable DoD IT investments will assist overall efforts significantly towards achieving the vision of NetOps Agility.