Wireless Broadband to the Rescue

Agencies go beyond wireless hot spots to provide critical network connectivity anytime, anywhere.

Source: Election Assistance Commission, December 2007

Wireless broadband service may be becoming ubiquitous, now that the major telecommunications carriers have begun bulking up their third-generation cellular network rollouts, but establishing 3G connectivity marks only the starting point for an agency deploying it.

Truly successful rollouts hinge on smart, secure integration of the anytime, anywhere connectivity with an organization’s most critical applications, say IT project leaders at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the Navy. These agencies should know: Both have undertaken agencywide broadband initiatives.

Wireless broadband offers opportunities to improve mobile access, says Shiv K. Bakhshi, director of mobile device technology and trends at IDC. “While there will always be a place for Wi-Fi connectivity, the great merit of mobile broadband is that it liberates the user from the spatial tyranny of the so-called hot spot. Organizations that capitalize on that freedom will come out ahead.”

Officials from the ATF and the Navy Marine Corps Intranet team say success with their initiatives took time, and they had to overcome specific challenges during rollout:

• Coverage. Ensuring optimal coverage across the United States requires a great deal of planning. ATF chose a solution that automatically homes in on an area’s strongest wireless network and connects over that, while the NMCI team studies users’ travel and application requirements before issuing an air card.

“We do an analysis: Where do you plan to go? Does Verizon have coverage or Sprint have coverage? Which one works best for you?” says Greg Johnson, manager of information assurance and network services for contractor EDS. “Only then do we issue them a card and set up their software.”

LESSON: Make sure through careful upfront planning for network coverage that the service satisfies end users’

connectivity needs and that they take to the new service quickly.

• Security. The more-mobile user creates a more risky environment for information assurance. “Without a virtual private network in place, we wouldn’t have been able to do this,” explains ATF’s Larry Bell, deputy assistant director and deputy assistant CIO. “Security is a priority, especially when it comes to law enforcement.”

LESSON: Require encrypted links across the Internet via secure VPN tunnels, either Secure Sockets Layer or Internet Protocol Security (IPsec).

• Complexity. Johnson says rolling out air cards for different notebook computers, with different operating systems and applications, creates an integration challenge. “It’s a hardware/software solution, and the delivery of the drivers and the applications to make it work were tough,” he says, noting that NMCI uses both Microsoft Windows XP and Windows 2000 on its notebooks.

LESSON: Be ready to test and retest your pilot service before ramping up use. “It’s often challenging to get the drivers to be compatible with what you have in terms of an OS and their applications. It takes a great deal of regression testing, so you need to plan for that,” Johnson says.

• Commercial mind-set. NMCI ran into some roadblocks with the carriers because wireless broadband applications primarily target consumers. “They’ve got an abundance of tools built into these applications aimed at the standard commercial or home user, and they assume everyone has administrative rights on the notebook,” Johnson says.

LESSON: Expect that your IT team will have to tweak and customize code to make the carrier’s tools fit agency requirements and to protect agency systems and data. “We ended up having to go in and customize the interface of the application for our users, and that was a challenge,” he says.

• Feedback. At ATF, Bell’s team holds a meeting once a week with the agents doing the pilots. “We have a

teleconference call, so any requirement changes come right out of the field. If they’re having a problem or they need something different to improve their performance, then we hear about it right away.”

fact:

20%:
Productivity gain that ATF estimates its agents achieve through broadband wireless connectivity

LESSON: Keep in constant contact with end users to learn first-hand about how the service is working and how well any adjustments resolve problems that users or IT discover.

• Training. Users will have a new and far more intense ability to access applications, and they might not know quite how to handle that. “The wireless part was fairly straightforward,” Bell says. “But it was the use of the system, getting into a database and sharing information with each other that was difficult for users.”

LESSON: Plan for training up front and for helping users adjust to the cultural shift of collaborating on the fly in the field.

Despite the challenges, ultimately IT and users in the Navy and ATF came to find the wireless broadband service indispensable. “It’s not just a nice-to-have; it’s necessary to meet the mission,” the Navy’s Riley says.

At ATF, Bell says users keep asking for more connectivity. The bureau has begun a project to expand its initial service, which linked agents with bureau data.

“We’re working with other law enforcement agencies so that we can access their systems wherever we are,” Bell says. “One of the great things about agents is you give them a tool, and they find new uses for it and immediately start to push the envelope. And we’re trying to keep up.”

NMCI: Ready for Anything

The Navy Marine Corps Intranet Program Office kicked off a wireless broadband project in 2005 to ensure that service leaders, who travel frequently, could have continuous access to NMCI applications, just as if they were in their home offices.

“Those officers need the IT services that NMCI provides, and they can’t be locked out or wait until they get to the installation they’re visiting,” says Eddie Riley, a project officer for NMCI. “It’s a critical requirement.”

NMCI provides officers and other Navy personnel with notebook PCs equipped withJuniper Networks’ Secure Sockets Layer or Secure Internet Protocol virtual private networks and third-generation (3G) air cards. Users can access Navy apps even in areas where traditional connectivity is unavailable — important when the Navy responds in the aftermath of hurricanes, for instance. “One of the first applications of the air cards was in support of Hurricane Katrina,” says Greg Johnson, manager of information assurance and network services for NMCI contractor EDS. “We had these COW [cellular on wheels] system environments, deployed air cards in notebooks, and our users were back up and running quickly. Emergency situations are a big driver for this. When you need reliable access quickly, it’s there.”

Broadband wireless has become an integral part of how the service operates in the field and “is unique in that it allows the Navy and the Marine Corps to securely and remotely do their job whenever and wherever they are,” says Riley.

ATF: Free to Roam

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives began rolling out broadband wireless connectivity to its 3,500 field agents in 2006 so that agents at crime scenes and ad hoc operations centers could access criminal databases and other critical information sources at ATF headquarters.

Instead of waiting an average of 24 hours for carriers to hook up traditional network connectivity out in the field, agents now tap into ATF’s flexible wireless connectivity via the Internet. Using notebook computers equipped with broadband wireless cards and software that automatically scans the surrounding area for available wireless networks, such as third-generation (3G) service or Wi-Fi hot spots, the agents can be up and running on a moment’s notice — anytime, anywhere.

But the real bang for ATF’s buck comes from the ability to tap their applications. Once agents are connected, they use a Secure Sockets Layer virtual private network to access the bureau’s web portal. “This isn’t just e-mail,” says Larry Bell, deputy assistant director and deputy assistant CIO at the bureau. “We provide secure access to collaborative applications, including whiteboards, chat rooms and database searches.” The result, he says, is a 20 percent increase in productivity across the board.

“It’s a force multiplier for us,” Bell says. “We don’t have to have agents running back and forth to the office. They can operate wherever they are. They can work from their car and have their office with them. With this setup, they don’t need to do anything differently when they’re in a remote location versus being in the office.”

Broadband Wireless in Your Pocket

So far, so good is the how the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives views its broadband wireless rollout. But Larry Bell, deputy assistant director and deputy assistant CIO, says he’s always on the lookout for next great thing. At the moment, that’s providing broadband access via personal digital assistants.

“One of the great things about our portal is that it works via PDAs,” he says. “So people can do searches from their PDA, just as if it were a notebook.”

One example would be an agent who leaves his notebook computer in his car to walk to a remote crime scene. With a PDA in his pocket, he could still access critical ATF data, as well as immediately update any information he learns at the scene, via e-mail, photos or video, depending on the PDA’s capabilities.

One caveat is that the PDAs need virtual private network support and the ability to encrypt the data stream, something that’s not automatically available. For example, some newer smartphones don’t ship equipped with a VPN interface. “We have limited PDA choices out there now, but I’m hoping that’s going to increase,” Bell says.