ESC, FAA officials collaborate on information challenges

  • Published
  • By Chuck Paone
  • 66th Air Base Wing Public Affairs
HANSCOM AIR FORCE BASE, Mass. --  An Electronic Systems Center team led by Chief Technical Officer Dr. Tim Rudolph hosted some key senior Federal Aviation Administration officials to discuss mutual challenges and cooperative initiatives Jan. 29.

The session focused primarily on efforts to leverage enterprise architectures that support portfolio activities and information strategies that support data sharing and interoperability.

The officials also discussed new technologies and avenues for continuing collaboration. Specifically, they looked to focus on identifying and cataloguing new technologies that can be transitioned.

"We had some very productive and open dialogue," said Dr. Rudolph, who emphasized that his Department of Defense role was not as an Air Force architecture lead and that ESC set up the meeting only to help establish and maintain cross-agency discussion and cooperation. "It is obvious we share many similar challenges and can both benefit from this partnership-building opportunity."

Obviously net-centricity and airspace management are key roles for both the FAA and the Air Force, and both entities are critical players in ongoing efforts to identify capabilities in the collaborative development of the next generation national air transportation system, known as NextGen. However the overlap transcends even those efforts.

"We both need to bring an enterprise-wide perspective to the management of information across all of our programs and domains," said Dr. Rudolph. "By sharing our plans, our experiences and our technical approaches, hopefully we can help each other do all of this more efficiently."

Several meeting participants, including FAA National Air Space Chief Architect Jesse Wijntjes, talked about the need to connect agency information systems through a standard system of governance.

"We can't simply rely on tactical efforts [to manage and act on information]," he said. "We need command and control at the enterprise level."

ESC, which has worked enterprise-level architecture and C2 efforts for both intra- and inter-service systems, may be in position to provide some good examples for his agency, Mr. Wijntjes said. Likewise, there's great value for the Air Force in looking into approaches being used by the FAA, which has to harness so many real-time information sources around the clock.

ESC and the FAA already share a common thread, as both now use the DOD Architecture Framework.

Participants also spent a lot of time talking about technology exchange opportunities. Sabrina Saunders-Hodge, manager of the FAA's Research Partnerships Group, provided an overview of her group's activities. She noted that her group is working to identify and catalogue technology being developed within and outside of FAA.

She also noted that she has been working with Air Force Research Laboratory to try to have an AFRL employee assigned to the FAA to support technology development and sharing between the agencies. She mentioned specifically that the FAA was looking at working with AFRL on human factors engineering and unmanned aerial system activity. She was both enthusiastic and open to further discussions on technology identification and sharing opportunities.

Lt. Col. Mark Coluzzi, AFRL liaison and a member of ESC's Capabilities Integration Division, also participated and said he's "anxious for more dialogue and potentially assisting in identifying and sharing technology for mutual use."

Diana Takata, NextGen acting lead architect, also attended the meeting. She came away impressed by the open dialogue and the potential for future information exchanges.

Ms. Takata said: "This is really good and so impressive. I am very excited about the potential opportunities that lay ahead for both our organizations to share in a common area and future development."

ESC continues to play a leading role for both the Air Force and the Department of Defense in the formulation stages of NextGen.

"This was definitely a great and very worthwhile exchange," Dr. Rudolph said. "I think it's a fine example of the kind of cross-agency collaboration that reduces redundancy and helps key federal entities operate in a more unified fashion."