software development | The Contracting Education Academy

January 11, 2021 By cs

Army aims to be less dependent on contractors for software

The command of the military branch in charge of looking ahead is soliciting prototypes for a major knowledge-transfer initiative.

By March, Army Futures Command plans to award an offeror with an agreement to establish a program that would start with coding workshops and beginner training and, after five years, end with a scalable government-only software development facility.

The Army’s first soldier-led software factory “shall be staffed, built, and run from zero existing infrastructure or policy precedent, to ultimately transition to Army self-sustaining operation as a fully-uniformed agile software development unit without a heavy reliance on contracted presence,” reads a solicitation posted to beta.sam on Dec. 28th. “The future operating environment will include contested communications and the Army can no longer singularly rely on industry to provide software solutions given the infeasibility of contractors on the battlefield in a high-intensity conflict with a near-peer adversary.”

Keep reading this article at: https://www.nextgov.com/emerging-tech/2020/12/army-aims-be-less-dependent-contractors-software/171098/

March 11, 2020 By cs

Pentagon teeing up nine programs to test new ‘color of money’ for software development

Of all the challenges the Defense Department faces in buying and building software, the rules that govern how it pays for it are widely-considered one of the biggest.

And Defense officials think they have a plan to convince Congress to finally change them.

The Pentagon is lining up a series of nine acquisition programs it wants to use as test cases to prove out the concept of using a new Congressional appropriations category that’s specific to software. They would let those programs break free from the “color of money” strictures that were originally designed for military hardware, but make little sense in the context of the agile software development model DoD aspires to embrace.

Ellen Lord, the undersecretary of Defense for acquisition and sustainment, said DoD plans to announce the programs it’s nominating for the software appropriations pilot “soon.” Assuming Congress gives the okay, the department would start implementing the new funding line for those programs as soon as next fiscal year.

“It’s a very, very significant move, structurally, in how we get money,” she told attendees at the annual WEST 2020 premier sea services in San Diego recently. “But I think we will begin to see results almost instantaneously, because the administrative burden of making sure you are charging the right development number, the right production number, the right sustainment number, slows things down. And we know with coding, we’re getting feedback constantly. We want people to literally be able to update systems on the fly.”

The nine programs DoD is teeing up for the pilot will be a mix of software-intensive weapons systems and IT business systems across the military services and Defense agencies. Congressional appropriators would need to approve the idea of allocating funds into software-dedicated accounts before the department could proceed.

Keep reading this article at: https://federalnewsnetwork.com/acquisition/2020/03/pentagon-teeing-up-nine-programs-to-test-new-color-of-money-for-software-development/

March 10, 2020 By cs

Agencies struggle with DevOps procurement

DevOps remains a “small pilot effort on a handful of applications” at many federal agencies, in part, because it requires accepting greater ambiguity in the procurement process, according to a new white paper.

**Click on the image above to download the DevOps white paper.**

ACT-IAC defines DevOps as an organizational philosophy where practices like the agile software development methodology are combined with tools to rapidly deliver IT apps and services.

ACT-IAC’s DevOps Working Group released a white paper last week compiled from survey results and hundreds of conversations with government officials. The paper includes case studies from agencies six agencies: the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, IRS, National Museum of African American History and Culture, National Park Service, and National Science Foundation.

DevOps has agencies seek potential solutions earlier in the development process than traditional procurement, when specific requirements aren’t known, which makes evaluating contracts more challenging, according to the paper.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.fedscoop.com/agencies-devops-procurement-challenges/

February 6, 2020 By cs

Pentagon’s number-two officer vows to fix software acquisition ‘nightmare’

The new vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said the Defense Department needs to fix its requirements processes — not just its acquisition procedures — if it’s going to make real progress toward buying and building software as quickly as Silicon Valley does.

And as of now, according to Gen. John Hyten, the process is a “nightmare across the board.”

At the suggestion of the Defense Innovation Board, Ellen Lord, the undersecretary of Defense for acquisition and sustainment has promised to create a software-specific acquisition pathway for DoD systems.

But Hyten told an audience at the Center for Strategic and International Studies that changing DoD’s buying procedures won’t solve the problem if it’s still stuck with a requirements process that takes too long, and was built for tanks and aircraft carriers.

In his capacity as the chairman of Joint Requirements Oversight Council, Hyten is largely in control of that process — known as the Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System (JCIDS). He believes it’s stuck in the industrial age.

Keep reading this article at: https://federalnewsnetwork.com/defense-main/2020/01/pentagons-number-two-officer-vows-to-fix-software-acquisition-nightmare/

May 29, 2019 By AMK

The Pentagon’s software buying has been outdated since 1987

The Defense Innovation Board warned that the Defense Department’s age-old approach to software procurement and development could dull the military’s technological edge.

“A large amount of DOD’s software takes too long, costs too much, and is too brittle to be competitive in the long run,” the board said in the study’s executive summary of its Software Acquisition and Practices report. “If DOD does not take steps to modernize its software acquisition and development practices, we will no longer have the best military in the world, no matter how much we invest or how talented and dedicated our armed forces may be.”

The SWAP study was mandated by the National Defense Authorization Act in fiscal 2018. It examines how the agency procures and advances software and offers recommendations on how it could do so more efficiently.

“This particular assessment, from over 30 years ago, referenced over 30 previous studies and is largely aligned with the assessments of more recent studies, including this one.”

Keep reading article at: https://www.nextgov.com/it-modernization/2019/05/pentagons-software-buying-has-been-outdated-1987/156782/

The command of the military branch in charge of looking ahead is soliciting prototypes for a major knowledge-transfer initiative.

Of all the challenges the Defense Department faces in buying and building software, the rules that govern how it pays for it are widely-considered one of the biggest.

DevOps remains a “small pilot effort on a handful of applications” at many federal agencies, in part, because it requires accepting greater ambiguity in the procurement process, according to a new white paper.

The new vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said the Defense Department needs to fix its requirements processes — not just its acquisition procedures — if it’s going to make real progress toward buying and building software as quickly as Silicon Valley does.

The Defense Innovation Board warned that the Defense Department’s age-old approach to software procurement and development could dull the military’s technological edge.

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