Software | The Contracting Education Academy

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The Pentagon’s software buying has been outdated since 1987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Keep reading article at: https://www.nextgov.com/it-modernization/2019/05/pentagons-software-buying-has-been-outdated-1987/156782/

May 21, 2019 By AMK

Software acquisition – still a tough nut to crack

Effectively acquiring and sustaining the massive number of software systems the Pentagon employs is a perennial problem, experts say. It often takes too long for the Defense Department to purchase and deploy new, cutting-edge software or upgrades.

Despite efforts by Congress to root out the problem through various well-intentioned reports, issues persist, said Jeff Boleng, a special assistant for software acquisition at the Defense Department. He is a key member of Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Ellen Lord’s executive leadership team.

“We’ve got a whole bunch of numbers staring us down — we’ve got 804, 805, 809, 813, 872, 873, 874, 868,” he said, referring to sections of recent National Defense Authorization Acts.

“Essentially, Congress is inside DoD’s decision loop here telling us how to fix software more quickly than we can actually address some of the problems and implement them,” he noted.

Boleng is working closely with the Section 872 panel which — alongside the Defense Innovation Board — is focusing on software acquisition regulations, he said during a recent event hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.

The report will soon wrap up and is slated to be delivered to the Pentagon in April and then to Congress in May, he added.

“There’s a lot in there. Surprisingly, there’s not a ton that’s new,” he said. “I hope that the timing is right for some of these recommendations. We’ve been looking back in history at various other studies that have been done on acquisition reform, software technology, information technologies. [And] we’ve been lamenting about this problem since the ‘70s — literally when software first started to even be created for defense systems — and a lot of times we say the same things.”

Keep reading article at: http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2019/3/19/algorithmic-warfare-software-acquisition—still-a-tough-nut-to-crack

May 15, 2019 By AMK

How GSA is making software contracts more like commercial sales

The General Services Administration has adjusted some components of its IT Schedule 70 contract, the federal government’s largest IT purchasing vehicle, to give agencies a more efficient way to buy software services, the agency announced April 16.

Three special item numbers on the contract, which more narrowly define IT services the government wants to purchase, were updated to help agencies better comply with policy and purchase new technology.

“Now our offerings align better with the way software is sold commercially,” Bill Zielinski, acting assistant commissioner of GSA’s Office of Information Technology Category, wrote in a blog post. “Now it’s easier for our customers to get what they need, including transferring software licenses among federal entities.”

The three changes adjusted language related to term software, perpetual software license and software maintenance service contracts.

The updates better define term software as distinguished from software-as-a-service, include identification tags and transferability rights for perpetual software licenses, add utilization limitations across all three special item numbers and define commercial supplier agreements to include enterprise user license agreements and terms of service agreements.

Keep reading article at: https://www.federaltimes.com/acquisition/2019/04/17/how-gsa-is-making-software-contracts-more-like-commercial-sales/

April 16, 2019 By AMK

Pentagon promises to get to work on software acquisition overhaul

The Pentagon’s acquisition chief vowed on Thursday that the Defense Department will get to work immediately on a sweeping revamp of DoD’s practices and policies for buying and building software.

After a year of study and under a directive from Congress, the Defense Innovation Board (DIB) drafted 26 separate recommendations to fix DoD software acquisition, including 10 “primary” recommendations. Members presented their findings at a public board meeting on Thursday.

At the meeting, Ellen Lord, the undersecretary of Defense for acquisition and sustainment, explicitly endorsed several of the DIB’s suggestions, including that the Pentagon needs entirely separate software acquisition pathways, distinct from its traditional hardware-centric rules.

She said her office had already begun rewriting DoD’s primary acquisition policy document, Instruction 5000.02, to achieve that end.

Keep reading this article at: https://federalnewsnetwork.com/defense-main/2019/03/pentagon-promises-to-get-to-work-on-software-acquisition-overhaul/

March 14, 2019 By AMK

IRS wasted $3.4 million on software it never used, watchdog says

IT management shortcomings led the IRS to waste millions of dollars on licenses and subscriptions for software agency officials never used, according to an internal watchdog.

Because it failed to follow federal acquisition requirements, the agency also deployed a software product that fell far short of its promised functionality, auditors said.

In a recent report, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration found the IRS didn’t actively manage its IT assets or monitor the cost of the myriad software subscription and support packages used across the enterprise. As a result, the agency spent roughly $3.4 million between 2015 and 2017 on tools it didn’t need, auditors said.

They also found insufficient management caused the agency to lean too heavily on a separate package of software tools, which put it at risk of penalties and fines from the vendor, IBM.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.nextgov.com/it-modernization/2019/03/irs-wasted-34-million-software-it-never-used-watchdog-says/155247/

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.

Effectively acquiring and sustaining the massive number of software systems the Pentagon employs is a perennial problem, experts say. It often takes too long for the Defense Department to purchase and deploy new, cutting-edge software or upgrades.

The General Services Administration has adjusted some components of its IT Schedule 70 contract, the federal government’s largest IT purchasing vehicle, to give agencies a more efficient way to buy software services, the agency announced April 16.

The Pentagon’s acquisition chief vowed on Thursday that the Defense Department will get to work immediately on a sweeping revamp of DoD’s practices and policies for buying and building software.

IT management shortcomings led the IRS to waste millions of dollars on licenses and subscriptions for software agency officials never used, according to an internal watchdog.

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