At this year’s TechNet Cyber the Defense Information System’s Agency (DISA) outlined its priorities not just for the next fiscal year, but the next five years. This announcement was indicative of a noticeable shift in how the Department of Defense and its agencies are approaching IT investment and acquisition. Not only do these changes reflect renewed efforts to be more operationally efficient but also acknowledges a need to be better stewards of public funds and will position the agency for continued success if budgetary reductions come to pass.
“Aligning agency priorities for the next 5 years with the Program Objective Management (POM) cycles is critical for several reasons,” explained Torie Williams, President of Chenega Agile Real-Time Solutions (CARS). “First and foremost, it allows DISA to be intentional with timely planned resources ensuring each priority is resourced appropriately over time. Then, it clearly shows how funding aligns with priorities, which includes people and technology investments, as they are presented to Congress for approval.”
To build this fit-for-purpose IT environment that will support the warfighter in rapidly changing and complex theaters, requires an understanding of the fundamentals of modern IT, such as being cloud smart and adhering to a Zero Trust security posture, as well as being agile to support rapid fire IT evolution. “The cloud is fundamental to mission success today,” explained Williams “It gives the Department of Defense a competitive advantage by enabling enterprise data to be shared across environments so that whether they’re in Washington, DC at the Pentagon or a geographically dispersed warfighter, everyone has access to critical data. This data then supercharges the use and impact of AI and ML. This will reduce the time to make the agency and the nation more secure in myriad ways from understanding threats, detecting cyberthreats, improving security hygiene, and driving agile development for future software needs.”
But there’s still more that needs to happen to help DISA and the DoD, writ large, to make these transitions and goals and some of the key changes need to happen within industry. For Williams, Executive Orders play an important role in helping the DoD’s industry partners to grow and adapt to the DoD’s changing needs. “For example, the DoD needs to move away from customized capabilities as much as possible,” he explained. “The ability to integrate IT systems across the enterprise is critical to gaining a competitive advantage, so interoperability and integrations must be a requirement. This happens more easily with commercial products and open standards, and it also buffers the department against the risk of single points of failure for both knowledge management and personnel availability to maintain critical solutions.”
This still leaves a question hanging over how this new approach to investment and procurement will avoid the lengthy procurement cycles and tendencies to see costs balloon that the DoD faces today. “These issues must be addressed at the highest levels,” Williams noted. “Rooting out duplication of services, breaking down siloed programs of record are imperative. So, for industry it means having language in contracts that forces enterprise integration and compliance with enterprise efforts. This will be a marked change because many programs of record don’t have language to drive compliance at present. New contracts have to be written and reviewed at the highest level to ensure Performance Level Objectives drive the desired enterprise outcomes.”
To this end, Williams suggests three key actions for DISA:
- To focus on agile acquisitions and CLIN structures that use best in class contract vehicles with predefined costs, Other Transaction authorities and other acquisition options that support agility.
- To move to the central management of software licenses to control costs and drive efficiencies at the enterprise level.
- To prioritize contracting officer training: Contract officers have experienced retrenchment over the last few years. While this has created a shortage of skilled workers, it also creates the opportunity to train a new generation of contract officers on the options for creating contracts that align with technical requirements, mission benefits, and that are in line with both the cultural change being imparted by DoD leadership and driven by Executive Orders.
As with any significant change, while there’s a burgeoning readiness to embrace change, there will undoubtedly be some resistance. For Williams, the commitment to communicate intentionally, assess frequently, and provide feedback through open channels has already begun. “Organizational change management cannot be an afterthought,” he concluded. “It must happen at the speed of technology adoptions, like AI. These IT enabling capabilities will change how the workforce does their work and how leadership develops their decisions. It’s only when all three elements of technology, process, and people are in alignment that we can ensure that change will be embraced for the sake of mission success.”
Learn more here.