The Defense
Information Systems Agency (DISA), which is
under the jurisdiction of the Department of
Defense (DoD), was involved in organizing
these scenarios on behalf of US Southern
Command.(SOUTHCOM).
Defined as a
"Combat Support Agency", DISA has a mandate
to provide IT and telecommunications,
systems, logistics services
in support of the
US military. (See DISA website:
Defense Information
Systems Agency).
On the day prior to the earthquake, "on
Monday [January 11, 2010], Jean Demay,
DISA's technical manager for the agency's
Transnational Information Sharing
Cooperation project, happened to be
at the headquarters of the U.S. Southern
Command in Miami preparing for a test of the
system in a scenario that involved providing
relief to Haiti in the wake of a hurricane."
(Bob Brewin, op cit, emphasis added)
The
Transnational Information Sharing
Cooperation project (TISC) is a
communications-information tool which
"links non-government organizations with the
United States [government and military] and
other nations for tracking, coordinating and
organizing relief efforts".(Government IT
Scrambles To Help Haiti, TECHWEB January 15,
2010).
The TISC is an essential component of the
militarization of emergency relief. The US
military through DISA oversees the
information - communications system used by
participating aid agencies. Essentially, it
is a communications sharing system
controlled by the US military, which is made
available to approved non-governmental
partner organizations. The Defense
Information Systems Agency also "provides
bandwidth to aid organizations involved in
Haiti relief efforts."
There are no details on the nature of the
tests conducted on January 11 at SOUTHCOM
headquarters.
DISA's Jean Demay was in charge of
coordinating the tests. There are no reports
on the participants involved in the disaster
relief scenarios.
One would expect, given DISA's mandate, that
the tests pertained to simulating
communications. logistics and information
systems in the case of a major emergency
relief program in Haiti.
The fundamental concept underlying DISA's
Transnational Information Sharing
Cooperation project (TISC) is to
"Achieve Interoperability With Warfighters,
Coalition Partners And NGOs" (Defense Daily,
December 19, 2008)
Upon completing the tests and disaster
scenarios on January 11, TISC was considered
to be, in relation to Haiti, in "an advanced
stage of readiness". On January 13, the day
following the earthquake, SOUTHCOM took the
decision to implement the TISC system, which
had been rehearsed in Miami two days
earlier:
"After the
earthquake hit on Tuesday [January 12,
2010], Demay said SOUTHCOM decided to
go live with the system. On [the
following day] Wednesday [January 13,
2010], DISA opened up its
All Partners
Access Network,
supported by the Transnational
Information Sharing Cooperation project,
to any organization supporting Haiti
relief efforts.
The information
sharing project, developed with backing
from both SOUTHCOM and the Defense
Department's European Command, has been
in development for three years.
It is designed
to facilitate multilateral collaboration
between federal and nongovernmental
agencies.
Demay said that
since DISA set up a Haiti Humanitarian
Assistance and Disaster Relief Community
of Interest on APAN on Wednesday [the
day following the earthquake], almost
500 organizations and individuals have
joined, including a range of Defense
units and various nongovernmental
organizations and relief groups. (Bob
Brewin, Defense launches online system
to coordinate Haiti relief efforts
(1/15/10) -- GovExec.com
emphasis added)
DISA has a Southern
Command (SOUTHCOM) Field Office
in Miami. Under the Haiti Disaster Emergency
Program initiated on January 12, DISA's
mandate is described as part of a carefully
planned military operation:
"DISA
is providing US Southern Command with
information capabilities which will
support our nation in quickly responding
to the critical situation in
Haiti," said Larry K.
Huffman,
DISA's Principal Director of
Global Information Grid Operations. "Our
experience in providing support to
contingency operations around the world
postures us to be responsive in meeting
USSOUTHCOM's requirements."
DISA, a Combat Support Agency, engineers
and [sic] provides command and control
capabilities and enterprise
infrastructure to continuously operate
and assure a global net-centric
enterprise in direct support to joint
warfighters, National level leaders, and
other mission and coalition partners
across the full spectrum of operations.
As DoD's satellite communications
leader, DISA is using the Defense
Satellite Communications System to
provide frequency and bandwidth support
to all organizations in the Haitian
relief effort. This includes Super
High Frequency missions that are
providing bandwidth for US Navy ships
and one Marine Expeditionary Unit that
will arrive shortly on station to
provide medical help, security, and
helicopters among other support. This
also includes all satellite
communications for the US Air Force
handling round-the-clock air traffic
control and air freight operations at
the extremely busy Port-Au-Prince
Airport. DISA is also providing military
Ultra High Frequency channels and
contracting for additional commercial
SATCOM missions that greatly increase
this capability for relief efforts. (DISA
-Press Release,
January 2010, undated, emphasis added)
In the immediate
wake of the earthquake, DISA played a key
supportive role to SOUTHCOM, which was
designated by the Obama administration as
the de facto "lead agency" in the US Haitian
relief program. The underlying system
consists in integrating civilian aid
agencies into the orbit of an advanced
communications information system controlled
by the US military.
"DISA is also leveraging a new
technology in
Haiti that is already linking
NGOs, other nations and US forces
together to track, coordinate and better
organize relief efforts" (Ibid)
ANNEX
Defense launches online system to
coordinate Haiti relief efforts
By Bob Brewin,
Govexec.com
01/15/2010
http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=44407&dcn=e_gvetwww
As personnel representing hundreds of
government and nongovernmental agencies from
around the world rush to the aid of
earthquake-devastated Haiti, the
Defense
Information Systems Agency
has launched a Web portal with multiple
social networking tools to aid in
coordinating their efforts.
On Monday [January 11,
2010, a day before the earthquake], Jean
Demay, DISA's technical manager for the
agency's Transnational Information Sharing
Cooperation project, happened to be at the
headquarters of the U.S. Southern Command in
Miami preparing for a test of the system in
a scenario that involved providing relief to
Haiti in the wake of a hurricane. After the
earthquake hit on Tuesday [January 12,
2010], Demay said SOUTHCOM decided to go
live with the system. On Wednesday [January
13, 2010], DISA opened up its
All Partners Access
Network,
supported by the Transnational Information
Sharing Cooperation project, to any
organization supporting Haiti relief
efforts.
The information sharing project, developed
with backing from both SOUTHCOM and the
Defense Department's European Command, has
been in development for three years. It is
designed to facilitate multilateral
collaboration between federal and
nongovernmental agencies.
Demay said that since DISA set up a Haiti
Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief
Community of Interest on APAN on Wednesday,
almost 500 organizations and individuals
have joined, including a range of Defense
units and various nongovernmental
organizations and relief groups.
APAN provides a
series of
collaboration tools,
including geographical information systems,
wikis, YouTube and MySpace-like pages and
multilingual chat rooms.
Meanwhile, other organizations are tackling
different technological challenges. Gianluca
Bruni, the Dubai-based information
technology chief for emergency preparedness
and response for the World Food Programme,
is setting up networks and systems to
support United Nations and nongovernmental
organizations in Haiti. WFP already has
dispatched two communications kits to Haiti,
with satellite systems that operate at 1
megabit per second and can support up to 100
users. It also has sent laptop computers,
Wi-Fi access points and long-range
point-to-point wireless systems to connect
remote users to the satellite terminals.
Bruni said eventually WFP plans to set up
cyber cafés in Haiti for use all relief
workers in the country.
Jon Anderson, a DISA spokesman, said the
agency is supplying 10 megabits of satellite
capacity to Navy, Marine and Air Force units
engaged in the Haiti relief operation.
Many of the relief organizations and
agencies in Haiti are bringing their own
radio systems to the country. DISA has
deployed a three-person team from its Joint
Spectrum Management Element to help manage
radio frequency spectrum.
The Joint Forces
Command's
Joint Communications
Support Element
deployed two teams equipped with satellite
systems and VoIP phones to support SOUTCOM
in Port-au-Prince late Wednesday. Those
systems were operational "in a matter of
hours," said JCSE Chief of Staff Chris
Wilson. The organization will send another
team to Haiti in the next few days.
Wilson said JCSE was able to get its gear
into Haiti quickly because the systems
already were loaded on pallets in Miami in
preparation for an exercise that has been
canceled.
So many governments and agencies from around
the world have responded to the crisis in
Haiti that they have overwhelmed the ability
of the Port-au-Prince airport to handle
incoming relief flights. The Federal
Aviation Administration has had a
ground-stop on aircraft headed for Haiti for
much of the past two days.
FAA warned in an
advisory
Friday that "due to limited ramp space at
Port-au-Prince airport," with the exception
of international cargo flights, "the
Haitians are not accepting any aircraft into
their airspace."
The advisory added that domestic U.S.
military and civilian flights to Haiti must
be first be cleared by its command center.
Exemptions will be based solely on the basis
of ramp space. The agency also starkly
warned "there is no available fuel" at the
Port-au-Prince airport.
Copyright Bob Brewin, Govexec.com,
2010.
