The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) on Thursday released its inaugural Vision for the Intelligence Community (IC) Information Environment: An IT Roadmap.
The IC-endorsed executive document identifies five priority areas where investment will be most needed over the next five years, including cloud, cybersecurity, and AI.
“The roadmap presents a unified vision for investments the IC must make to continue to provide the United States with unmatched decision advantage at a time of unprecedented technological change,” IC Chief Information Officer (CIO) Adele Merritt said on May 30. “Adversaries are not standing still and neither are we. The time is now for strategic and substantial investment in the core IT infrastructure of the IC.”
ODNI said the roadmap was created with input from more than 100 technical leaders across the IC, and all 18 intelligence elements unanimously endorsed the document.
The IC’s first focus area is a “reliable and resilient digital foundation.” The key initiatives in this focus area include optimizing the IC’s cloud environment; advancing and scaling compute, storage, and transport; and empowering the edge.
The roadmap lists target milestones, including developing and deploying at the edge by fiscal year 2028.
The roadmap’s second priority area, “robust cybersecurity,” keys on achieving zero trust, modernizing enterprise risk management, maturing and integrating security coordination, increasing security through DevSecOps, and realizing quantum resistant cryptography.
Deadlines include achieving “basic” zero trust by the end of fiscal year 2025 and developing and deploying quantum resistant cryptography solutions for IC networks by 2027.
The roadmap’s third priority area is focused on “modern practices and partnerships.” The IC’s key initiatives in this section include enhancing and extending collaboration, cultivating agile and non-traditional partnerships, achieving ubiquitous IT accessibility, and advancing interoperability among IC elements.
The roadmap is also focused on enhancing the IC’s mission with data-centricity. This includes realizing end-to-end data management, implementing a data-centric architecture, and transitioning sensitive data siloes to data-centric enclaves.
Finally, the IC’s roadmap is focused on “advanced technologies and workforce readiness.” This includes advancing AI at scale, preparing now for “over-the-horizon” capabilities, and priming the future workforce. The roadmap lists fiscal years 2026-2030 as the timeline for delivering AI at scale.
ODNI said that it will continue to update this roadmap annually using a collaborative process with IC stakeholders and outside experts to position the IC to evolve with technological changes and stay ahead of threats.
