PRESS Release
For immediate publication
9/10/2007
CompuSat Organizes DHS Information Sharing Chaos
CompuSat Services Incorporated (CSI), a Montana corporation, announces the launch of the Federated Intelligence Network, http://fedintel.net. The FedIntel network is a secure, role based, single sign-on, single point of entry, web based portal for Homeland Security and FEMA emergency management services. The FedIntel network provides a common ground for information sharing and collaboration across a wide spectrum of homeland security systems.
The FedIntel Network is modeled after the National Response Plan, NRP, and the National Infrastructure Response Plan, NIPP. Councils, committees, centers and agencies specified in the plans will have information sharing and collaboration centers on the portal. CSI will be adding the National Incident Management System, NIMS, to the architecture in the near future.
The FedIntel network is build on Microsoft’s SharePoint 2007 technology and is integrated with Microsoft Exchange and Office Communications Server providing information sharing, messaging, and real-time collaboration.
Ray Stuyvesant, founder of CSI, is the lead architect of the Federated Intelligence Network. Mr. Stuyvesant was also the lead architect on the Homeland Security Information Network (HSIN) critical sectors portal and the Defense Online portal for DISA and the Department of Defense.
Background:
The DHS government, https://government.hsin.gov and critical sector, https://cs.hsin.gov web portals have been in production for over a year. The two portals essentially make up the foundation of the Homeland Security Information Network, HSIN. There have been numerous hearings, findings, and press releases about the short comings of this $71 million dollar information sharing system. The GAO is wondering where the money went.
The HSIN system was developed from a conglomeration of misfit applications, numerous chiefs and no direction. As a result, there has been chaos, a lot of false starts, limited buy-in from state and local agencies and, in general, a very slow adoption rate. At the time the HSIN system moved from a pilot to a live portal, (June of 2006), the NIPP and the NRP were not part of the design plan of portal. The NIPP and the NRP have reorganized and collected the disjointed practices into a forward thinking plan.
Now that there is a plan, the information sharing system has to be upgraded to fit the plan. The "Federated Intelligence Network" will be that upgrade. CSI has re-engineered the portal system from the ground up. The new architecture is based on the NRP, the NIPP and NIMS directives. The FedIntel Network is designed to support almost every aspect of and entity indentified in the plans. Plan councils, committees, and coordination centers will have information sharing centers and work spaces on the FedIntel Network. State branches of the network will support state, local and tribal information sharing centers for SLT management and operations. The FedIntel Network will include an emergency management branch to support FEMA regional coordination centers that map to state and field operations centers, JFOs, EOCs and ICPs as part of the NIMS system. In addition, “proactive provisioning emergency response services” will provision sites for emergency response teams to extent and automatic many of the NIMS functionality. New features of Microsoft Exchange Unified Communication and Office Communications Server will add unprecedented collaboration functionality.
The system is designed to provide a repository with secure and controlled access to homeland security information across government, military and non-government domains. The architecture of the security and information processing system facilitate regulated sharing of a variety of classifications of information including: FOIA, PCII, unclassified and classified data.
CSI is also in the process of re-engineering several existing applications, including tools such as: Incident Reporting and management, Suspicious Activity Reporting (SARS), Protected Critical Infrastructure Information (PCII), Homeland Infrastructure Threat and Risk Analysis (HITRAC), National Asset Database (NADB), and several others. These applications will be added to the network and will be fully integrated with it. In addition, CSI has begun developing services to integrate with other third party information services including: FBI Law Enforcement Online LEO, RISSNET, InfraGard, Cybercop, PM-ISE, and several others as they are identified.
CSI's goal is to introduce the Federated Intelligence Network to all agencies and organizations identified in the NIPP and NRP during the next few months. During that time, additional feedback will be collected to facilitate development of specialized processes and workflows for information processing to optimize the usability of the network. It is anticipated the system will be available for formal release by 10/1/2007. CSI expects to roll out the system to the federal sector over the next few months then to the state and local domains. NIMS functionality will be available by next spring.
Up to this point, DHS, FEMA, and many other organizations have been operating as individual systems with a plethora of “SILO” type information and operations management systems. There has been no coordinated effort to build a cohesive nationwide interagency program. CSI will be proposing a unified system for this purpose. The system will consist of a central operations center linked to a collection of regional centers that are in turn linked to state and local centers. The NRP and NIPP will be applied to the central and regional centers and the NIMS will be applied to the SLT centers. Fusion centers, state and critical sector ISACs will also feed into central operations and regional centers. CSI will propose a five year plan to establish the infrastructure and operations of the system. CSI will propose that government employees staff the centers and become a unified homeland security network supporting emergency management as well as counterterrorism operations.
As part of the program, CSI has also initiated a plan to establish the National Security Consortium. The consortium will consist of subject matter experts, officials and scholars in the field of national security and emergency management. CSI invites persons interested in becoming members of the consortium to contact us at: solutions@csiwebservices.net
The Federated Intelligence Network has been entirely funded by CSI. CSI owns full copyright to the intellectual property and patentable design of the FedIntel system. (SharePoint is a registered trademark of Microsoft) CSI also owns the hardware and software that supports the current prototype. Investors and venture capitalists are invited to inquiry about investment opportunities by contacting the CFO at: CFO@csiwebservices.net
Information about FedIntel can be found on the public web site: http://fedintel.net
Information about CSI can be found on the public web site: http://csiwebservices.net
Information about the National Security Consortium can be found on the public web site: http://nsconsortium.com