advanced technology development | The Contracting Education Academy

August 17, 2018 By AMK

Pentagon’s startup outreach office no longer an experiment

Diving into long-term relationships can be scary, but the Defense Department said it’s ready to go to commit to its startup outreach program.

Defense Innovation Unit Experimental (DIUx), the office charged with bringing Silicon Valley tech to the Pentagon, will now be known as Defense Innovation Unit (DIU).

The name change reflects military leaders’ “commitment to the importance of its mission” and signifies the permanence of the group within the country’s defense apparatus, according to Deputy Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan.

“DIUx has generated meaningful outcomes for the department and is a proven, valuable asset,” Shanahan wrote in a memo to agency leaders. “Though DIU will continue to experiment with new ways of delivering capability to the warfighter, the organization itself is no longer an experiment.”

Keep reading this article at: https://www.nextgov.com/cio-briefing/2018/08/pentagons-startup-outreach-office-no-longer-experiment/150408/

December 20, 2017 By AMK

Homeland Security’s ‘innovation station’

A variety of systems cultivated under a Homeland Security rapid development program may be fielded late next year, bearing the first major fruits of the 2-year-old effort.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) kicked off its Silicon Valley Innovation Program in 2015 in an attempt to dramatically reduce the time to develop and deploy technology. The program focuses on all areas of the DHS mission, including information technology, finance, energy, health and first responders.

Program officials work largely with smaller companies, often startups that do not normally collaborate with the government. The businesses, in many cases, already have products and commercial customers, but their technologies need to be further developed and adapted to suit DHS needs.

“We actually have [entrepreneurs] whose venture capitalists have told them not to work with government because it’s too slow,” reports Melissa Ho, managing director of the DHS Silicon Valley Innovation Programs Office. But now, she says, startups want to work with the DHS “because we’re a customer that can validate their technology and because we have a way of contracting with them faster.”

Keep reading this article at: https://www.afcea.org/content/homeland-securitys-innovation-station

May 26, 2016 By AMK

The DIUx is dead — long live the DIUx

Defense Secretary Ash Carter launched his high-profile Silicon Valley outpost a year ago to great fanfare and high expectations. Less than a year later, he has completely overhauled its leadership, structure, reporting lines, and resources.

That a new government initiative built around experimentation would struggle in its first year is no surprise. That its founder would candidly address early challenges and publicly identify shortcomings and fixes as a matter of course is a big one. By taking early corrective action, Carter is upending the typical Washington playbook of prolonging failure — or, worse, postponing reform until demanded by scandal — and teaching his Department a critical lesson on how to learn by taking risk.

With its small size and steep learning curve, the DIUx 1.0 could not overcome the weight of expectations from a high-profile launch. As with many startups, the organization suffered from an overly broad purpose and unrealistic demands; unlike other startups, it missed the opportunity to operate in “stealth mode” to address these issues early.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2016/05/ash-carter-diux-pentagon-technology-innovation/128254/?oref=defenseone_today_nl

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.”

Defense 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

March 2, 2016 By AMK

Defense Dept. awards Georgia Tech contract to support cyber security information systems

The Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC) awarded the Georgia Tech Applied Research Corp. (GTARC), the contracting arm of the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI), a prime contract to support its Cyber Security and Information Systems Technical Area Task (CS TAT) program.

This CS TAT award is an indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity (ID/IQ) contract with a ceiling value of $5 billion and a period of performance of five years.

“GTRI’s experience as the prime contractor on DTIC’s Military Sensing Information Analysis Center (SENSIAC) program, the deep bench of our large CS TAT team and GTRI’s strong and relevant past performance were key winning themes,” said GTRI’s CS TAT program manager Stephen Moulton. “GTRI leveraged several of its flagship programs to secure this award.”

Some of these programs include:

GTRI-developed Air Force Access Database System (AFADS): the authoritative source of personnel access information for special security;
Framework for Assessing Cost and Technology (FACT): an open architecture Web services-based environment that enables the interconnecting of models to provide rapid exploration of the design trade space in support of systems engineering analysis;
Apiary Malware Analysis Platform: this has analyzed more than 170 million unique samples of malicious binary files and executables and has generated over one billion analytical records to date
Prime support of Deployable Joint Command and Control (DJC2): a Secretary of Defense and Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, priority transformation initiative that provides a standardized, integrated, rapidly deployable, modular, scalable, and reconfigurable Joint C2 Combat Operations Center to designated Geographic Combatant Commands;
GTRI’s support for the National Information Exchange Model (NIEM): A primary information sharing data layer supported by the Department of Justice, Homeland Security and the Department of Defense.

“All of these GTRI-led programs and many others mentioned in the proposal made this award a very easy decision for selecting Team GTRI for a prime contractor spot on CS TAT,” Moulton said.

GTRI assembled a very strong research and development team of 10 academic institutions, 4 non-profit research institutes, and 23 small and large business industry partners that work or perform research in all of the CS TAT technical focus areas, which include the following:

Software Data and Analysis
Cyber Security
Modeling and Simulation
Knowledge Management and Information Sharing

GTRI initiated the CS TAT capture process in July 2014 through the team of Chad Garber (capture lead), Trina Brennan, Jerry Lett, Roberta Burke, Steve Heighton, Jim Hilliard, Amy Paronto, Chris Smoak, Steve “Flash” Gordon, Frank Klucznik, Ryan Spanier, Ben Medlin, Margaret Loper, Chuck Turnista, Mark Kindl, Tommer Ender, Steve Reeder, Tim Boone, Bill Underwood, Terry Ragan, Ben Lowers, Valerie Taylor, Michael Farrell and Matt Guinn, as well as many others across GTRI.

GTRI’s expertise in basic and applied research, advanced technology development, advanced components and prototypes, system development and demonstration, research development test and evaluation (RDT&E) support, and operational system development, in addition to its frequent collaborations with Georgia Tech faculty, multiple facility locations, open-source software capabilities and a large body of cleared personnel contributed to the award.

“This was a total team effort across GTRI and our teammates,” said Steve Moulton, Director of Strategic Program Development, Information & Cyber Sciences Directorate (ICSD). “Thanks to all of the hard work of our CS TAT capture team and to GTRI’s SENSIAC and Defense Systems TAT (DS TAT) teams that went before us, whose groundwork greatly added to our success and our ability to efficiently capture this CS TAT award,” added Moulton.

DTIC, which reports to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (ASD(R&E)), awarded CS TAT, effective Dec. 1, 2015. The vehicle is a multiple-award, ID/IQ contract for research and development (R&D), as well as for advisory and assistance services related to R&D efforts.

In addition to GTRI, contracts were awarded to nine other large businesses and six small businesses. Small businesses are not allowed to compete within the large business (full and open) pool. Task order-level contracts (TATs) range in value, but GTRI will regularly compete for TATs with values up to $50M and higher if sponsors require more ceiling. CS TAT, like DS TAT, is now a primary and very viable contract vehicle option for GTRI and our DoD and federal government sponsors.

For more information, please contact the CS TAT Program Management Office (PMO) at cstat@gtri.gatech.edu.

Source: http://gtri.gatech.edu/news/gtri-awarded-position-cs-tat-contract-vehicle

Diving into long-term relationships can be scary, but the Defense Department said it’s ready to go to commit to its startup outreach program.

A variety of systems cultivated under a Homeland Security rapid development program may be fielded late next year, bearing the first major fruits of the 2-year-old effort.

Defense Secretary Ash Carter launched his high-profile Silicon Valley outpost a year ago to great fanfare and high expectations. Less than a year later, he has completely overhauled its leadership, structure, reporting lines, and resources.

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.

The Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC) awarded the Georgia Tech Applied Research Corp. (GTARC), the contracting arm of the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI), a prime contract to support its Cyber Security and Information Systems Technical Area Task (CS TAT) program.

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