The U.S. Department of Defense is expected to spend an estimated $23.5 billion this year on IT -- the most of any federal agency -- according to market research firm Input.

One of the people with a say in how that money is spent is David Wennergren, deputy assistant secretary of defense for information management and technology and the deputy CIO at the Defense Department. Wennergren joined the Defense Department five months ago after spending 26 years at the Department of the Navy, where he most recently held the CIO position.

This week Wennergren spoke at an Input event in Washington, D.C., about the 10 most important IT issues on his mind, including becoming net centric, implementing security in the new age of information sharing and effective management. Here are his priorities:

1. Developing net-centric operations

The world of networking used to be like Tinker Toys, Wennergren says. “You had point-to-point solutions, and as more and more people embraced the power of information technology with point-to-point solutions, the Tinker Toys became unwieldy as you tried to grow a network where more and more people are collaborating,” he says. “There had to be a better way. And it’s plasma balls.”

Plasma balls are those psychedelic lamps that have cool glowing light inside (powered by low-density gas and an electrode), which responds when someone touches the outside. Just as there is light available to anyone who touches the plasma balls, there is knowledge available to everyone to consume in a net centric world, Wennergren explains.

“It’s all about the data. That’s what makes all of this work,” he says. “A few years ago it was all about the infrastructure, the network haves and have-nots. This generation’s story is all about the data -- how you get access to it, and how you use it.”

While the concept is easy to understand, it’s not easy to implement across a huge organization that has all branches of the military underneath it. Wennergren points to three problems that need to be addressed as net centric operations are deployed and supported across the Defense Department. “I can’t find it, if I can't find it I can’t access it, and if I can’t access it I can’t understand it,” he says.

The Defense Department’s net-centric data strategy is all about addressing those problems, he says.

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