Garing said he's also interested in the processes that companies use to deploy technology, not just their technology itself. In particular, he has made number of visits to Google, which follows a process that can move an idea for a new online service from the laboratory to beta-testing and then to real users in just a few months. If the service gets a lot of hits from users, Google will flesh it out, Garing said; if it doesn't draw much interest, the company will drop the project and minimize its investment.

Contrast that approach to the DOD's internal processes: First, Garing said, someone will write a detailed specification, which will be followed by a lengthy analysis of alternatives -- "only to deliver something in five years that is 4.5 years out of date." Speed and flexibility is what helps make Google and other companies successful, in Garing's opinion, "and that's why we went to see them."

DISA works with a variety of IT vendors; for instance, the agency will be using a blade system from Hewlett-Packard as part of the cloud computing platform it's developing.

Alfred Rivera, DISA's director of computing services, said he expects cloud-based services to give a push to increased IT standardization in the military. As DISA provides a standard suite of operating platforms as well as increased deployment speed and agility under the RACE initiative, other agencies within the military will want to use the technology, thus bringing standardization with it, Rivera said.

Garing plans to continue learning from businesses and individuals that are forward-thinking in their approaches to IT -- for instance, by inviting people such as Marc Andreessen, the co-author of the Mosaic Web browser and co-founder of Netscape Communications, to talk to DISA employees.

Many companies and people have been generous with their time, Garing added. "They're patriots, all of them, and they want to share," he said. "If they can make us better consumers and smarter at what we do, then the Defense Department is better off, and so are the warfighting kids that we are taking care of."