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You are here: Home / Government Contracting News / Pentagon shakes up Silicon Valley outreach

May 16, 2016 By AMK

Pentagon shakes up Silicon Valley outreach

Defense Secretary Ash Carter is elevating and expanding the Pentagon’s controversial technology sector outreach efforts — and replacing its leaders — just one year after launching a Silicon Valley initiative he calls crucial to keeping the U.S. military the best in the world.
Ashton B. Carter, U.S. Secretary of Defense, says “DIUx will be a testbed for new kinds of contracting with startup firms. They’ll work quickly to execute time-sensitive acquisition programs. And they’ll move at the speed of business.”

The Defense Innovation Unit Experimental, or DIUx, will also open a second office in Boston, where Carter has deep ties.

The secretary announced the changes on his fifth trip to Silicon Valley since taking office, reflecting on the past year and seeking better results.

“Some of what it’s taught us is not about DIUx’s shortcomings so much as about our shortcomings as a department as a whole,” Carter said Wednesday. “I think we need to admit when we have to change.”

DIUxDefense Department officials painted the leadership change not as a panicked shakeup nor as admission that the endeavor had stalled, but as a natural and organic transition into a more Silicon Valley-based model. Carter called the leadership swap and Boston expansion a “sign of confidence” in the endeavor.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2016/05/pentagon-shakes-silicon-valley-outreach/128198

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: acquisition reform, advanced technology, advanced technology development, Defense Innovation Unit Experimental, DIUx, DoD, federal regulations, innovation, NDAA, Pentagon, procurement reform, sole source, streamlined acquisition process, technology

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