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Power To The Edge
When it comes to delivering IT products and services, speed to the edge is a priority for DOD, Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force. And it is reflected in the way they are building today’s IT contract vehicles.
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For our nation’s Warfighters, the action has always been on the edge. When they need an IT solution, they can’t wait. And if they can’t get the IT they need fast enough, today’s Millennial soldiers, sailors and airmen figure one out for themselves.
The Warfighter doesn’t care what the infrastructure is behind the screen. They don’t care about the platform, the brands and or the architectures. They don’t care what contracting vehicle is used; they just want the products and services they need – now!
So, what is a contract? A contract is just a vehicle, an enabler that allows a person or an organization to get the products and/or services they need to accomplish the immediate task at hand and the overall mission.
An Army, Air Force, Navy DOD Priority
Getting these capabilities to those who need them in a timely fashion has always been a priority, but sometimes laws and logistics have created obstacles.
To deliver “power to the edge” fast, DOD is increasingly buying IT hardware, software and communications products under BPAs and multi-contractor IDIQ contracts; at the same time they are turning to performance-based services contracts and crafting SLAs where outcomes are stated and performance
metrics are required.
That is changing rapidly, because the mindset is changing and the realities of today’s world demand it. Speed and power to the edge is a priority for DOD and the Services. It is an expressed objective of DISA and it is reflected in the way DOD is building today’s IT contract vehicles. For example:
“It will help our warfighters be efficient in peace and effective in war while providing them the right information in the right format to the right place at the right time,” according to the Air Force’s NETCENTS 2 RFP. The contract will be awarded in 2009. Learn more at https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&tab=core&id=
e521c115dc0d156efe8ac49ae5f54998&_cview=1&cck=1&au=&ck.
Navy “SeaPort-e provides a faster, better and more cost-effective means of contracting for professional support services,” says K.R. Wheelock CAPT, SC, U.S. Navy, Deputy Commander for Contracts, Naval Sea Systems Command on the SeaPort-e website home page. Learn more at http://www.seaport.navy.mil/default.htm.
“We support all components of the Army – the sustaining base, the strategic planners, the power projectors and the Warfighters. The CHESS program leverages the latest technology advances while making sure those products are compliant with current commercial, DoD and Army policy and standards,” said Micki LaForgia, CHESS program manager in an interview earlier this year with1105 Custom Media. Learn more at https://ascp.monmouth.army.mil/
scp/standardspolicies/ascp_contracting.jsp.
At DISA, the Procurement Directorate / Defense Information Technology Contracting Organization (DITCO), procures global net-centric capabilities and support customers through innovative contracting and acquisition logistics.
Through contracts such as Encore 2 and others, DITCO plans, awards, and administers contracts for IT and communications products and services required by DOD agencies and other U.S. Government agencies. DITCO procurement responsibility is worldwide in scope. Learn more at http://www.ditco.disa.mil/.
Capabilities Delivered Through The Cloud
Meeting the expectations of today’s Millennials is a challenge all government is facing. They expect to have the same computing power on the job as they have in their personal lives. Sometimes that doesn’t smoothly mesh with government rules and regulations.
That’s one reason why cloud computing, sometimes described as “pay as you go” computing or “applications by the drink” offers so much promise.
These capabilities are already available in the commercial space. They are behind the success of Google and Amazon and others. They are used by millions every day. DISA has seen the power of cloud computing and is actively working on bring these capabilities into the DOD space.
“To me it’s fairly simple, it’s the ability to draw services from a cloud, from a platform in which computing is offered as a service,” said John Garing, DISA CIO in an interview with 1105 Custom Media.
The platform is composed of whatever it takes to enable that – the network, the data center, the security, things of that nature. From this platform enabled cloud, you can get the applications and services you need and distribute them via the Internet or secure network.
DISA didn’t learn about cloud computing by reading books. “To me it’s almost limitless as to what one would be able to do in a large cloud like Google, Amazon or Salesforce.com has,” explained Garing.
“We’ve actually visited those three and talked to them, and they’ve come to see us. Their strengths are the way that their clouds are designed and how they manage their clouds, their platforms.”
But even though Garing might like to, due to security and other policy concerns, DISA can’t bring them inside the DISA firewall.
“Our challenge is to somehow create that kind of cloud computing environment inside the Department and offer services that are routine services in other clouds in a way that allows the users to define what they need to do – and get their computing power as a service,” said Garing.
To do that “we’ve started this with the initiative called Rapid Agile Access in the computing environment,” noted Garing.
RAA is the basis for the newly launched capability called RACE – Rapid Access Computing Environment where developers can buy the computing power they need using a government credit card or MIPR for as little or as long as they need it. (Click on “The RACE Is On” to read more about RACE.)
“This is a baby step, but it’s an important one,” noted Garing. “Because we have to get away from thinking of everything in a computer as an application that has a defined set of users, and to think more about services for users who are able to access the cloud, their services, when they want, for how long they want, from where in the world they are and how often they want.” Learn more about what DISA has planned at
http://www.disa.mil/conferences/forecast_industry/.
Changing Priorities
The question of how much of DOD contracting is for Information Technology has always been a tricky one to answer.
Specific spending as itemized in next year’s budget request, for instance, calls for about $33.1 billion for DOD IT according to INPUT. But this figure does not include significant expenditures for the computer and software systems embedded in weapons and other major non-IT platforms, a figure which is often said to exceed the stated IT budget.
Is it possible that DOD spends more than $75 billion per year on automation, computerization, software engineering and other CPU-related systems and services? Consider, for instance, that a weapons platform like the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter arrived last year with six million lines of software code embedded in its internal systems and subsystems.
Understanding DOD’s IT contracting portfolio requires distinguishing a contract from a program, and more importantly understanding that DOD IT contracts today often serve multiple programs or smaller segments of a
single program. The Worldwide Military Command and Control System of DOD’s legacy was also a computer contract. The Global Information Grid is not a “contract.”
A Changing Playing Field
DOD’s IT legacy revolved around “major automated information systems” for which there was often one large contract per system. Today DOD is increasingly buying IT hardware, software and communications under BPAs and multi-contractor IDIQ schedules that are price-based; or, DOD is turning to performance-based contracts and crafting service-level agreements in which requirements are statements of objectives and performance metrics are required.
In many such cases, officials note that IT should not even be addressed until task orders are being written, and that “pay as you go” computing capabilities such as RACE are the preferred method of buying in many cases.
The axiom “the bigger the program, the more certain its demise,” as often said, has certainly influenced the state of contracting in DOD IT, at least up to a point.
However, there are still many large-value contracts for hardware, IT services and IT support, and there are some very large contracts that long ago might have been counted for dead, such as the Composite Health Care System or the Navy-Marine Corps Intranet. But they along with contracts such as Encore, CHESS and NETCENTS still underpin vital IT modernizations and disprove the naysayers.
In fact, it’s impossible to say that there is such a thing as a “typical DOD IT contract.”
Inside this DOD IT Contract Guide, you’ll find descriptions of many of the DOD IT contracts that are in play today – with an emphasis on the larger or more prominent contracts – and some of the contracts you’ll be using tomorrow.
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