Unclassified ICITE on the horizon

The intelligence community's unified cloud-based computing platform will soon become more broadly accessible, and may have unclassified applications in the future, according to the top tech official at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Speaking at the Department of Defense Intelligence Information System Worldwide Conference in St. Louis, acting ODNI CIO Jennifer Kron said the intelligence community is working on a "multi-fabric initiative" to identify what services can be made unclassified.

Additionally, a secret version of the CIA's private Amazon cloud system known as C2S will launch in November, Kron announced. "Secret C2S" will be available to users with a secret clearance. Currently the system is limited to users with the higher TS/SCI clearance.

Kron wants to see ICITE services be made available more far afield, to reach more intelligence community users who are based outside the Washington, D.C., area.

ICITE was launched in 2012 under the leadership of former DNI James Clapper, as a way of centralizing IT spending to save money while developing a more secure, interoperable computing environment for the intelligence community.

Kron said that while increasingly the intelligence community is doing a better job of sharing data, there is long road ahead before the ICITE’s ambitious goals become a reality.

"The downside," she said, "is we're not necessarily structured to act like [a single enterprise] yet. Every agency, every element has its own policies, its own culture, its language. … We all have a different definition of our systems."

"While we're increasingly thinking as one enterprise,” Kron said, "it's still difficult for us to actually operate that way, and that’s something that’s going to take a while."