Where Information Management Leaders Go to Learn
Written by Patrick Chisholm
People sometimes ask Dr. Robert Childs, senior director of the Information Resources Management (IRM) College of the National Defense University (NDU), how the college is different since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, which brought out the importance of interagency communication and collaboration. Childs replies that it’s not that the college has changed. It’s that people have discovered how important the college is. With the key message of “A global learning community for government’s most promising information leaders,” the IRM College is working to educate individuals on how best to use information and information technology to collaborate.
For anyone wanting to obtain leadership development and education in network operations, enterprise architecture, information security/assurance, interoperability, IT project management, etc., and how to make it all work within the framework of multiple agencies, state and local governments, foreign countries, and private-sector players, NDU’s IRM College is the school of choice for many people within and outside of the Department of Defense.
Located at Fort Lesley J. McNair on the Washington, D.C., waterfront, the IRM College opened its doors in March 1990, and with approximately 3,500 students enrolled per year, is now the largest of the NDU colleges (the others being National War College, Industrial College of the Armed Forces, Joint Forces Staff College and School for National Security Executive Education).
The original charter designated the IRM College as an educational institution for the U.S. military. That later expanded to serve the entire federal government, largely because of the increasingly important role of other federal agencies in national security. The 1996 Clinger-Cohen Act (40 USC 1452), which set standards for federal agencies in managing information technology, brought the college further into the spotlight.
The IRM College is one of 75 schools across the U.S. designated as a National Center of Excellence (CAE) in Information Assurance Education by the National Security Agency and Department of Homeland Security. In 2003, the college was awarded the AFCEA Golden Link award for partnering with industry; it was selected for the eGovernment Trailblazer Award in 2002; and in 2000, the IRM College was honored by Corporate University Xchange for its innovative strategies and excellence in corporate education.
Policy guidance comes from the Assistant Secretary of Defense/Networks and Information Integration, and the University reports through the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. “OSD and the Joint Staff often request more emphasis in certain areas, like enterprise architecture, or working with an ally on interoperability,” said Childs. Subjects range from leadership education to strategic planning, from IT project management to incorporating new emerging technologies (particularly collaborative technologies), from process improvement to network security, and several other areas of information management. Courses are at the graduate level, with mostly GS13s and O5 military officers, and higher ranks, attending. Childs emphasizes that the IRM College is a business school, not a technical school. Most students therefore have management backgrounds rather than engineering or computer science backgrounds. “We’re in the business of how information is used—how it changes the organizational structure, how it changes leadership, how information is collected, shared, and archived. We are teaching people not to be technicians but to be leaders who use information and information technology for strategic advantage.”
He continued, “When and how you move information around—that changes organizations. In defense right now, the big buzzword is transformation. To transform things, you have to look at what technologies are available to do it, like collaborative tools that help decision making, that shorten decision times, that connect people and things with each other in new ways. By definition, that changes organizations and changes leadership styles.”
In the area of technology tools, the college has various laboratories, such as biometric labs that involve finger-printing, retinal scans, facial definition and the use of identification cards, as well as attack-and-defend and hacking labs where students learn about protecting networks. There will also be mock command-and control centers where a user may receive feeds from various sources and send information to people in the field. A group of IRM College faculty members recently visited a Lucent Technologies facility in Whippany, N.J., where the company demonstrated actions it took in the effort to help authorities deal with the Hurricane Katrina crisis. “Faculty saw first hand the communication methods and collaborative tools needed in crisis situations and will implement this information in our courses where appropriate,” said Childs. “At the college, we incorporate state-of-the- art technologies into the classroom experience.”
Another lab focuses on supervisory control and data acquisition, or SCADA, which are large-scale, distributed systems that monitor and/or control power grids and other critical infrastructure systems. “Eighty-five percent of the critical infrastructure in this country is in the private sector, and the IRM College is trying to reach out to show how these things need to be protected,” noted Childs.
DIVERSE BACKGROUNDS
About 75 percent of IRM College students are DoD personnel (both military and civilian), and the other 25 percent are from U.S. federal government agencies, international governments and the U.S. private sector. Of DoD personnel, 30 percent are active-duty military and 70 percent are civilians. Because the school’s funding comes from DoD, tuition is free for DoD personnel, reduced for other federal government employees, and full cost for others. The students are mainly from upper middle-level management, typically with more than 20 years of experience. Apart from DoD, there are many students from the State Department, Federal Emergency Management Agency, Environmental Protection Agency, Federal Aviation Administration, General Services Administration, General Accounting Office and the Department of Homeland Security. “We have a lot of Border Patrol and Immigration students too, because they work with sensing devices and the need to share information with other law enforcement agencies,” commented Childs. He also pointed out, “In a typical class, there may be people from DoD, FEMA, the State Department, from private industry, and international students—the interaction and discussion are much better than if all students were DoD or military. It makes for a much richer classroom environment. Our goal is to be a global learning community.” International students come from Bulgaria, Australia, Egypt, Israel, Malaysia, Pakistan, Philippines, Romania, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom and other nations. Most of them are sent by their respective countries’ defense organizations.
IRM College faculty members have varied backgrounds as well. Of the approximately 50 faculty members, about 40 are civilian and 10 are military. They come from disciplines that include management, engineering, business, education, economics, computer science and law. “I’ve hired some people that worked Booz Allen, and people out of the academic world. It’s a real mix and adds to diversity and different perspectives in classroom,” said Childs.
There are also frequent guest lecturers. They have included Karen Evans, who is the administrator of the Office of Electronic Government and Information Technology in the Office of Management and Budget; Navy CIO Dave Wennergren; and John Grimes, the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Networks and Information Integration, and the DoD CIO. In fact, in addition to the Joint Staff, the school gets policy guidance from Grimes’ office.
EDUCATION IN CONTEXT
The IRM College often sends faculty members to teach at a specific location, such as Joint Forces Command (Norfolk, Va.), U.S. Strategic Command (Offutt AFB, Neb.) or U.S. European Command. “We’re taking our mobile security lab to Europe this fall. And we taught at the U.S. Pacific Command in Hawaii. So we’re fairly international and very flexible, both with students and in delivering programs,” remarked Childs.
About 20 percent of IRM College students take classes through the school’s distributed learning (i.e., distance learning, DL) program. The IRM College uses the Blackboard distance learning system, considered to be the “gold standard” used by most U.S. universities. “We don’t just put things on the Internet and let students go from there. It’s highly interactive. Faculty members are very involved in our distributed learning courses, working with students and providing feedback.” A recent distributed learning course had a working group of six people, including an assistant secretary of defense. Childs said the team was made up from students located in Iraq, Korea, Germany, the United States and shipboard in the Indian Ocean.
In addition to DL courses, the college’s intensive “eResident” courses enable students come to the NDU campus for one week in residence, in addition to completing some offsite, on-line learning. “It’s a kind of blended model of distributed learning and residence. Students who choose the online distributed learning only, take courses over a 12-week period,” he said. The IRM College has the ability to be flexible and provide education wherever you are.
PARTNERSHIPS
Rather than offering degrees, the school offers graduate certificates. If a student is aiming for a graduate degree, however, 27 universities across the country accept IRM College credit, enabling students to go right into masters and doctoral programs. Students can receive from nine to 15 hours of graduate credit depending on what degree they choose.
For example, there is a partnership with George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., which has a Ph.D. program in IT. Another partnership is with Mississippi State University, where students can get a Ph.D. in business administration or computer science. There is a Ph.D. program in computer engineering or in electrical engineering at Texas A&M. The University of Tulsa has a program in information assurance, and Johns Hopkins University has an MS program in security informatics. Many IRM College students also enroll in Syracuse University, as they have established a campus in Washington, D.C. Syracuse has a Master of Science in information resources management, where students can specialize in either information assurance or enterprise architecture. Other partner universities include the University of Maryland Baltimore County, University of North Carolina-Charlotte, Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Pittsburgh, and New Mexico Tech. All 27 IRM College academic partner universities are listed on the college’s Website: www.ndu.edu/irmc.
In addition to their academic partnerships, the IRM College has formed alliances with other countries. One such partnership, with Romania, arose after three students from that country took the 14-week Advanced Management Program for CIOs. “They went back to their country and convinced the Romanian government that they needed to pursue information leadership education further. So we had faculty go to Romania and develop a similar program for them, tailored to their needs.”
The IRM College is carrying out a similar project with Bulgaria in transformation. There is also a 10-day program in Singapore focusing on IT capital planning and other CIO competencies. In addition, the college is working with Sweden to deliver courses in net-centric operations. They are working collaboratively with the United Kingdom Defence Academy on several knowledge-building areas.
The College also works with industry; it has a chair funded by Lockheed Martin, and one by Robbins-Gioia, an Alexandria, Va.,-based project management and consulting firm. Other companies the school works with include Gartner Group, Raytheon, CACI and Computer Sciences Corporation; there are guest lecturers from those companies, and/or the college provides lecturers to them. The school also has relationships with the American Council on Technology, and the Information Technology Association of America, among others.
ENTERPRISE EDUCATION
The IRM College offers about 230 courses a year. Courses are offered yearround, mainly during business hours, or online. Courses may be taken towards completion of graduate certificates or for professional development purposes. The programs fall into the areas of information leadership, CIO competencies, enterprise architecture, IT project management, information assurance/security, and organizational transformation. With approximately 2,000 students, the CIO program is the largest. The next largest is information assurance, with about 1,000 students.
Childs said enterprise architecture likely will be the fastest-growing area. “When you design an architecture, you have to build in at the beginning how it’s going to work with other systems. Information systems need to connect with one another. And we’re getting a number of requests for two- or three-day workshops for lower- and mid-level civil service personnel because these are the people who are going to be doing enterprise architecture in the coming years. There’s going to be a huge turnover at some point in the government; all that expertise walking out the door. Forward-thinking agencies want to get ahead of the curve and start educating mid-level people in these managerial skills now.”
While there are various courses on network integration and security, the curriculum doesn’t focus specifically on battlefield operations. However, much of what is taught is applicable to the battlefield, pointed out Childs. “In a course on network security or net-centric operations, the principles are exactly the same whether you apply them in DoD, EPA, DOE, FAA or any other agency. Coding, protection, encryption, interoperability— they apply across the board. It’s then up to the user to come up with the specific application. What we teach is the managerial concepts as you look at a system.”
MAKING INROADS
The importance of information management, and the IRM College’s role in it, shows. “I get e-mails from students and former students all the time saying how the IRM College’s curriculum has really helped their agency, even how it has gotten them promotions,” recounts Childs. “In fact, when I came here in the early ’90s as part of the academic team to build the programs, we had 400 students and were probably one of the least-known institutes within the federal government. But now we have 3,500 students a year. Our programs have grown tremendously.”
He added that, frequently, students tell him they wish they could have known about the school sooner. Evidently, the National Defense University’s IRM College is doing something right.
For more information on the IRM College and its programs, offerings, and services, visit its Website at www.ndu.edu/irmc. ♦