So Long NII

Defense Secretary Robert Gates made official the elimination of the office of the Assistant Secretary for Networks and Information Integration - also known as the office of the chief information officer. At a Pentagon press briefing today he detailed cuts in the Pentagon budget to save $100 billion over the next five years.

Gates added that the Joint Staff will also shut down its central command, control and communications shop. He added that the work done by NII and the Joint Staff C4 operation will be "assigned to other organizations and most of their acquisition functions will transfer to acquisition, technology and logistics."

Gates also derided what he called the decentralized approach to IT throughout the Defense Department:

"All of our bases, operational headquarters and defense agencies have their own IT infrastructures, processes and application-ware. . . . This decentralized approach results in large cumulative costs, and a patchwork of capabilities that create cyber vulnerabilities and limit our ability to capitalize on the promise of information technology."

Gates told the press briefing he wants to see the use of more common IT systems and applications throughout Defense.

Maybe I'm missing something here, but I thought standards and commonality was a key job of the ASD/NII organization.