DOD Agrees to Give Wireless Industry More Access to Spectrum Data
The Department of Defense reached an agreement with the wireless industry to share more detailed information on DOD use of spectrum, DOD Chief Information Officer Teri Takai said Tuesday during a Commerce Spectrum Management Advisory Committee meeting. DOD is the largest single government user of spectrum, and CSMAC members have long complained that a lack of information on the department’s spectrum portfolio has complicated CSMAC work on spectrum sharing (CD Jan 18 p1).
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Export Compliance Daily combines U.S. export control news, foreign border import regulation and policy developments into a single daily information service that reliably informs its trade professional readers about important current issues affecting their operations.
"We've come to a place where we need more detailed discussion if we're going to move the ball forward,” said NTIA Associate Administrator Karl Nebbia.
Last week, President Barack Obama signed a memorandum sharpening the administration’s focus on spectrum sharing (CD June 17 p1). The CSMAC working groups “are basically called out in the memorandum as models for the kind of work that needs to be going and needs to be improved upon,” said Tom Power, federal deputy chief technology officer. “The work ... is hard and I don’t know that it’s getting any easier, but it does the kind of collaboration that these working groups have been doing and the focus of the memorandum is to find more ways to open up information, to share information, to share expertise."
Under the agreement, 12 industry representatives, mostly engineers, from different companies will sign nondisclosure agreements giving them access to information that will not otherwise be made public, officials said. All of the companies are participating in the CSMAC sharing working groups.
DOD is “very focused on making this process work,” Takai said. “It’s extremely important to us going forward to be able to come up with solutions that work both for industry, but also in terms of our fulfilling our responsibilities from the national security perspective.” DOD must safeguard sensitive information, Takai emphasized. “I'm very often paranoid and I'm paid to be paranoid,” she said. “Clearly, these systems are going to be around for a while and the systems that we're talking about are systems that actually train our men and women so that they have the capability to do their jobs and do their jobs anywhere in the world.”
Another concern is making sure that those who sign the agreements won’t see their companies precluded from doing other business with DOD on the grounds that they have special access to information, Takai said. “That is a possibility, as remote as it all might be.” DOD would also like to explore whether another government agency could serve as an “intermediary” and “trusted agent” on sharing information between DOD and industry. “We haven’t worked out all of the details, just started to think about it,” she said.
DOD is fully committed to making sharing work, Takai assured CSMAC. “We've put a lot of time into each one of these working groups,” she said. “I haven’t held back staff at all in terms of being there to be on every single working group and, I think, chairing the bulk of them. We're all taking that out of hide. I mean, I'm furloughing people. We have sequestration.”
CSMAC also heard updates from its working groups that are delving into sharing problems (http://1.usa.gov/11XiBhL). Rick Reaser of Raytheon, chairman of Working Group 3, on 1755-1850 MHz satellite control links and electronic warfare, said the group just got information Tuesday morning on interference between handsets and satellite receivers. “This is the first block of text we've gotten from DOD so we're pretty pleased with that,” he said.
p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: “Times New Roman”; }table.MsoNormalTable { font-size: 10pt; font-family: “Times New Roman”; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }Jennifer Warren of Lockheed Martin, chair of Working Group 5, on airborne operations in the 1755-1850 MHz band, detailed the many problems raised by sharing spectrum with many of the DOD operations her group is examining. Working group liaison Bryan Tramont of Wilkinson Barker said the group in particular will benefit from increased sharing of DOD information.