CENDI PRINCIPALS AND ALTERNATES MEETING

National Technical Information Service
Springfield, VA
January 11, 2000

Minutes

Advanced Applications in Web Security

Proposed Outcome from NFAIS/CENDI Discussions

CENDI Strategic Planning

Welcome

Kurt Molholm, CENDI Chair, opened the meeting at 9:00 am.

Advanced Applications in Web Security on FEDWORLD (John DiDuro, Acting Security Officer and Director of FEDWORLD, NTIS)

FEDWORLD is an Internet Service Provider within the government with particular focus on security. They are involved in high-volume, mission critical Web, FTP, BBS and fax services. It is a 24-hour-per-day, 7-day-a-week production facility. FEDWORLD hosts a variety of public websites for other U.S. Government agencies including the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the U.S. Customs Service.

There are more than 125 servers of various types and approximately two dozen network devices. All the staff are government employees, primarily network engineers and telecommunications specialists.

The strategy for security within FEDWORLD involves Protection, Detection, and Diligence. Protection involves paying attention to the DMZ, which is outside the firewall. Detection involves extensive logging monitoring for port scans.

Mr. DiDuro noted that groups such as the CENDI IT Group and the Federal IT Group are important because they are a means of sharing information.

Proposed Outcome from NFAIS/CENDI Discussions

The group discussed its hoped-for outcomes from the special session with NFAIS members. Ms. Cotter briefly outlined the background that led to these discussions. The group identified awareness of issues and education on both sides as the best outcome.

CENDI Strategic Planning

Ms. Hodge presented the themes that were identified from a review of the strategic plans of 8 of the 10 agencies, and from the Secretariat’s understanding of agency activities in general. The key themes include:

• heterogeneous audiences
• customer focus
• metrics and evaluation
• customized interfaces and information
• integration of information products with user=s work
• networked architectures
• collection building (though not of a physical nature)
• digital archiving
• globalization of information
• partnerships
• "knowledge brokering"
• support for collaborative science and technology
• data exploitation and informatics
• interdisciplinary nature of science
• broadening types of material covered
• training the workforce

Planning issues for the future that were not readily apparent in the strategic plans included:

• public/private roles
• wireless and beyond the Internet
• education and orientation of the user community - how will science be taught
• scientific reward system
• the data/information intensity of science
• funding trends
• e-commerce

Ms. Carroll presented two possible approaches to continuing the strategic discussions begun at the August planning meeting. One is a fast track that provides a draft strategic plan in time for an August planning meeting and the FY01 budget year. The other provides for more research and discussion time and does not conclude until FY02. Both include a possible meeting in conjunction with the ASIS Summit on Information Architectures, scheduled for April 7-9, 2000, in Boston. The organizers of the conference are Dr. Vic Rosenberg, University of Michigan, and Dr. Gary Marchionini, University of North Carolina. Ms. Carroll suggested that in addition to participation in the meeting, visits might be planned to one of two sites-- the MIT Media Lab, and Alta Vista.