ORLANDO—The National Security Agency
is pushing a threefold IT agenda: bring in new managers from outside
the agency, oppose critics that claim the agency trespasses on the
data privacy of U.S. citizens and make use of new technology to
analyze the data it gathers.
When Hayden joined NSA as its director in March 1999, he said he
found technological obsolescence at the agency. "That $3 trillion
[telecommunications] industry was racing away from us," he said.
NSA's problems reached a peak when its entire asynchronous transfer
network went down recently. Hayden said the event happened when
Washington was gripped by a snowstorm that kept employees at home.
He chose his deputy director, Bill Black, from the NSA Alumni
Association. Hayden said he realized his deputy director had to be
an NSA veteran, but he wanted one who had not left the agency happy.
NSA went to the IRS for its chief of IT, he said, and to the Walt
Disney company for its chief of research.
NSA also is working to counter accusations that it illegally
eavesdrops on private citizen’s communications.
Hayden said, "If you want NSA to exist, it has to have
[information-gathering] power and the trust that it won't touch
protected information."
NSA also has a great deal to do in the field of new technology,
Hayden said. He cited the Groundbreaker contract, a 10-year, $2
billion pact with Computer Sciences Corp. to provide IT for
non-mission-critical systems.
Hayden added, "We want to broaden our alliance with industry, and we
want to buy outcomes, not inputs."
"It is about dealing with the mass, dealing with the volume," he
said. "We have generally succeeded in finding the needle in the
haystack. … But now there are too many haystacks. … Now the problem
is creating actionable information from the fact and pattern of
haystacks."
NSA has deployed a Cryptologic Services Group to the Homeland
Security Department, Hayden said. Working with the new department
"plays to our sweet spot,” he said, adding, “We are good at pushing
information forward in a variety of classifications and formats."
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