Dave Mihelcic, former chief technology officer at DISA, discusses the agency’s expansion goals, and how they will deal with their new responsibilities.
The Defense Information Systems Agency is preparing to expand next fiscal year. The agency will bring aboard 1200 new employees and requested $1 billion in additional funding as it takes over IT functions for the Pentagon’s “Fourth Estate.” Dave Mihelcic, former chief technology officer at DISA and consultant at DMMI, says that DISA has experience with high workloads, and they can manage the new responsibilities. “DISA’s been through this before. In 1991, they took on the Service Data Centers. 192 data centers, they consolidated those down to 18, now it’s eight. They aren’t individually operated data centers, they’re part of an ecosystem that’s been optimized for security and cost,” Mihelcic said. “It is going to take time, initially DISA will take on operations as is, then they’ll start standardizing, then they’ll optimize. As contracts expire, they’ll consolidate operations, leveraging single contracts that should save the department significantly in the long run.”
