The document provides details on the department's vision for its future information technology enterprise and was signed by John G. Grimes, the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Networks and Information Integration and DoD Chief Information Officer.

According to Mr. Grimes, the department’s goal in establishing the GIG architectural vision is to promote unity of effort among those responsible for evolving today’s GIG to its target state, including component CIOs, portfolio managers, and architects.

The GIG is formally defined in existing DoD policy and described in the architectural vision. It is the combination of people, processes, and technology used for collecting, processing, storing, disseminating, and managing information throughout the DoD. It includes all departmental communications and computing systems and the interfaces to non-DoD mission partners. The GIG supports all DoD personnel and organisations, the missions, operations, and functions they perform, and the ability to exchange information within the department and with external mission partners.

The GIG architectural vision is one part of the DoD enterprise architecture - the part that describes the desired future state of the GIG. Other parts of the enterprise architecture include a description of the current information environment and capabilities and plans and strategies to achieve the transformation described in the GIG architectural vision.

"The GIG architectural vision is designed to be a short, high level, description of the department's objective enterprise architecture", stated Mr. Grimes. "It will evolve to reflect operational, systems, and technical changes to the target GIG."