The Defense Department is projecting a complete rewrite of its most important acquisition guidance. According to a pinnacle protection acquisition professional, that revision painting could have a heavy emphasis on software development. The branch will “start from scratch,” rewriting DOD 5000, Kevin Fahey, assistant secretary of protection for acquisition, stated Wednesday for the duration of an occasion hosted by the National Defense Industrial Association and the Section 809 Panel. This attempt was the “biggest component on my plate” in 2019, he stated. While the overhaul will increase awareness on transferring from a requirement-heavy procurement method to something lighter and more bendy, the technology issue of present-day weapons structures—and how that generation is bought and maintained—might be imperative, Fahey said.
“The conventional way we fund guns structures certainly isn’t how we need to fund software,” he said. There is an in advance buy, Fahey referred to, but the software program is constantly evolving. Acquisition systems need to be designed to upgrade and modernize the software program over time. “We are actually in a state of affairs wherein we’re trying to trade the way we do software program improvement and agile software improvement,” he said, citing pilot applications for the duration of the branch focused on improvement nice practices. Fahey argued the subsequent iteration of DOD 5000 is the first-class vicinity to cope with this issue.
“There are some who say maybe we need a distinctive 5000 document” that covers software improvement, he presented. “I’m now not certainly one of them due to the fact I agree with nearly every guns device we do might be software extensive. In his comments, Fahey additionally went meta, suggesting the report itself needs a technical improvement, as well. A virtual model of DOD 5000 could enable the guidance to be a living record, without difficulty updated to account for modifications inside the department’s organizational structure or improvements in enterprise and generation practices. That isn’t always the state of affairs we’re in,” he stated. “Every time you want to exchange it, it takes 3 years of adjustments so that by the point you’re performed, you need to trade it again. Fahey did not offer a timeline for the rewrite however said the group expects to have something to show for the attempt earlier than the quiet of the year.
