Agency Will Market IT Services To Other Agencies, Too

In an effort to save some money by sharing services, Federal Aviation Administration Chief Information Officer David Bowen announced Thursday the FAA will begin providing information technology security for the entire Department of Transportation by October.

The FAA is in the process of finalizing an agreement with the department to merge the IT security operations, and hashing out budgets.

The agency considers this a logical move, since the FAA already conducts its own IT security 24/7/365. The agency even provides weekend and after-hours IT security services for other, smaller DOT agencies which are limited to business-hours-only operations.

"We don't see many civilian agencies with the security expertise and infrastructure and ability to detect malevolent events as we do in FAA," said Bowen.

The FAA's IT security operation is projected to mesh seamlessly with the rest of DOT as it is comprised of a lot of automation, according to Federal Computer Week.

"We're seeing lots of alerts, and the vast majority of them are dealt with automatically," Bowen said. "It alerts us only to those that are serious."

The FAA is a big fan of shared services and it eager to do it - the agency has already saved $10 million by engaging in shared services.

The agency is planning to streamline and consolidate agency-wide IT functions by putting everyone on the same page, as it were, by taking a dashboard approach. This means a user can view summaries of projects, activities and aggregate data so they can track progress and 'drill down' to identify trouble spots easily and quickly.

According to Bowen, the FAA is also going to try for approval from the Office of Management and Budget and get named a Center of Excellence for IT security so it can market its IT security service to other agencies.

FMI: www.faa.gov, www.dot.gov