In a Decision Memorandum signed June 4, 2004, Mr. Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of Defense, announced his determination to establish the Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC) as a DoD Field Activity. DTIC will be under the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics (AT&L) and will report to the Director, Defense Research & Engineering (DDR&E), Dr. Ronald Sega. In promoting this organizational realignment in the DoD, the DDR&E has stated this action will enhance the use of DTIC scientific and technical information databases by all DoD research and engineering activities. In response to the announced decision, Mr. Kurt Molholm, the DTIC Administrator, said: "I consider this a business process transformation action, moving DTIC back to the primary functional community it's chartered to support."

In pursuing this course of action for DTIC, Dr. Sega has outlined several goals for the organization that are designed to focus DTIC on meeting the overall objective. They are:
1. Closely align technology performers (labs, product centers, non-DoD research organizations, etc.) with the scientific and technical information providers at DTIC,
2. Facilitate an enhancement of DTIC efforts to support the USD(AT&L) "E-Business" initiatives in research and engineering,
3. Promote the exploitation of emerging information technology tools on dynamic science and technology databases,
4. Expand on the synergy of research and engineering facilities, people, and information.

DTIC is known for several core missions. It is the central collection and dissemination point for DoD's scientific reports with over 2 million collected since its inception in World War II and an annual acquisition of over 25-30,000 new reports. Ongoing and planned R&D project information is garnered from both the DoD community and industry.
DTIC also oversees the management of 11 DoD Information Analysis Centers that are tasked to provide technical and analytical services to areas of critical DoD interest.
A third area of principal focus is the provision of web services to over 100 DoD web sites including the DoD home page DefenseLink and a number of R&D related sites in support of the DoD community.
For more information about DTIC, please visit the web site at http://www.dtic.mil or contact its user services staff at (703) 767-8244.

October 2004
bcporder@dtic.mil