ECS Delivers First Version of Federal Dashboard to CDM Program’s Systems Integrators

ECS, a Virginia-based information technology service management company, has delivered the first version of the Department of Homeland Security’s Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation dashboard to the CDM program’s systems integrators.

Joanna Dempsey, director of cyber solutions at ECS, confirmed the delivery of the minimum viable product dashboard at a MeriTalk webinar, where she also announced the dashboard’s scheduled pilot implementations in April, May and June.

With developments to the MVP dashboard in tow, Dempsey said the DHS and ECS intend to revert the dashboard’s functionalities back to basic during its initial release and incorporate enhancements based on feedback from agencies and the chief systems integrators of the CDM program, MeriTalk reported Wednesday.

Dempsey also expressed the need to observe data transparency when using the dashboard. She particularly cautioned against disconnecting the dashboard’s visualizations from underlying data as it introduces questions that the system cannot answer, which in turn creates trust issues.

Based on the timeline presented by ECS, the MVP of the federal dashboard, which offers end-users an enterprise view across all civilian agencies, would be scheduled for release by the end of the fiscal year. The actual federal dashboard will then be deployed at DHS by the end of the calendar year. The DHS will then work to link other agencies to the dashboard.

The federal dashboard draws support from collaborative tools provided by ECS partner Elastic, including Elasticsearch and Kibana. Campbell said. ECS has also adopted the Elastic Common Schema for the dashboard to standardize data from diverse sources into a common set of document fields. Matt Campbell, regional vice president for civilian agencies at Elastic, said the new dashboard is being developed to scrap the batch rollup procedure so it can ingest and analyze data in near real-time.