powdermonkey

Systems Approach to how DoD Acquires Systems

A paper I wrote a year or so ago for CSIS. happy holiday!

Systems Approach to how DoD Acquires Systems

Download Systems_Approach_to_how_DoD_Acquires_Systemsv2.pdf

This paper examines the methods and means that the DoD uses to acquire systems. Specifically, this paper explores how using a systems-approach can better meet the need for joint capabilities than the current practice of optimizing components. As missions evolve, systems need to be more robust, resilient and adaptive to new concepts of operation. We do not have the luxury of designing and deploying systems that cannot evolve over their lifespan. Instead, the Defense Department needs to adopt strategies that enable the reconfiguration of systems to meet changing mission requirements.

...
Conclusion
The gap between a commanders’ ability to carry out joint missions and the bureaucracy’s ability to acquire the fighting force must be addresses by the use of market mechanisms for the DoD acquisitions process.  The fact that needs are not being met on the ground is proof that our joint concepts are out of sync with actual capabilities. Centralizing the acquisitions process has not solved this problem and will not as long as our military continues to grow in size and complexity. 

Implementing a market based approach for acquisition reform will change the operational paradigm from one of process and control to one of accountability and execution, saving time and money over the long run. Markets mechanisms may not solve all of DoD’s acquisition issues, but they will help to create joint capabilities that make the military better suited to rapidly changing missions than it is with current acquisitions schemes.

wow old arcticle of mine: Who Will Make the Rules? Music Industry Faces Off at DC Conference

from O'Reilly old p2p site:

by John Scott, 05/21/2001

Who Will Make the Rules? Music Industry Faces Off at DC Conference

In what shapes up as an exhibition game for the Big League contests to come, music and movie industry lobbyists, artist representatives, a government official, and a reporter faced off in a debate on the future of digital entertainment. The outlook: threats, litigation, appeals, and (eventually) hearings before the Supreme Court. Most of the panelists who took part in this forum will no doubt be making their cases before Congress, the courts, and the media over the next several months and years.

Modelica

Interesting open source project, much large in Europe than the US:
Modelica and the Modelica Association
The object-oriented modeling language
Modelica is designed to allow convenient,
component-oriented modeling of complex physical systems, e.g., systems containing
mechanical, electrical, electronic, hydraulic, thermal, control, electric power
or process-oriented subcomponents. The free Modelica language, free Modelica
libraries and Modelica simulation tools are available,
ready-to-use and have been utilized in demanding industrial applications,
including hardware-in-the-loop simulations. The development
and promotion of Modelica is organized by the non-profit
Modelica Association.

Strong Angel 3 wrap-up

I participated remotely for the Strong Angel 3 demo (news story here: Disaster tech, this is only a drill).

My big takes aways:
1. Communication is king: being remote really drove that point home, we were to provide reach back for the demo but weren't able to until the last couple of days  because out there when the networks came up everyone (~800 people) jumped on the network.
2. Low bandwidth rules: we found that the high bandwidth tools didn't work as well.
3. Keep online tools simple: Groove had a workspace setup prior to the event for coordination, it worked pretty well before SA3 even though their were 80 people on it. Big problem was that it was meant to be used during the event as well where is became unusable - so much so people stopped using it, real bandwidth hog.
- instead IRC and a wiki should have been used for overall coordination
4. Virtualization: ROCKS! I have a MacBook Pro with parallels virtual machine running Windows XP, I needed it to access the Groove space. Having a big red button to kill XP when Groove locked up due to too many people using it was awesome.
5. Data: the virtualization and Groove space taught me that data needs to be accessible regardless of the operating system/platform. Not everyone has the latest laptop (or even a laptop) or cell phone.
6. Virtual data: data needs to be accessible on any platform.

Take aways:
1. data agnostic, no proprietary formats or lock-in to one platform especially for capabilities that are needed across the mission
2. community collaboration tools must be low bandwidth
3. keep it simple, some folks on the ground wanted to do everything in digital when a yell across the room would have sufficed
4. Who is who and who is doing what? social context is really important for when you have distrubuted collaboraiton going on, especially in an environment where you don't have time to meet everyone. Also hugely helpful for the next disaster.

FBI Case Management System

FBI Great story about the mess of the FBI case management systems, basically if you keep building digital systems like they are physical systems :

Who Killed the Virtual Case File?

By Harry Goldstein

How the FBI blew more than $100 million on case-management software it will never use

...The VCF was
supposed to automate the FBI's paper-based work environment, allow agents and intelligence analysts to share vital investigative information, and replace the obsolete Automated Case Support (ACS) system. Instead, the FBI claims, the VCF's contractor, Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC), in San Diego, delivered 700 000 lines of code so bug-ridden and functionally off target that this past April, the bureau had to scrap the US  $170 million project, including $105 million worth of unusable code. However, various government and independent reports show that the FBI—lacking IT management and technical expertise—shares the blame for the project's failure.

In a devastating 81-page audit, released in 2005, Glenn A. Fine, the U.S. Department of Justice's inspector general, described eight factors that contributed to the VCF's failure. Among them: poorly defined and slowly evolving design requirements; overly ambitious schedules; and the lack of a plan to guide hardware purchases, network deployments, and software development for the bureau.

4 Million $ to MuleSource

interesting, moving up and across the stack(s):

A start-up called MuleSource has convinced two venture capitalists that there's money to be made in bringing open-source methods to the software that ties together existing computer applications, CNET News.com has learned.

MuleSource

closed a deal Tuesday for $4 million in funding split evenly from Hummer Winblad Venture Partners and Morgenthaler Ventures, said co-founder and Chief Executive Dave Rosenberg. The company is aiming
for a place in the market for integration software, sometimes called an enterprise service bus, that passes messages among different applications that often don't know how to communicate directly.

The company's technology is based on the Mule open-source software launched by co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Ross Mason, a consultant who specializes in integration issues.

San Francisco-based MuleSource, with seven employees so far, plans to formally launch in September, the same time it releases a new version of the Mule software. The company plans to sell recurring  subscriptions for software support, Rosenberg said.

Write as We Fight

Write as We Fight

If the boots-on-the-ground community is urged to “train as you fight,” the technology community that supports warfighters must similarly be urged to code as we fight—not as a set of scattered assembly lines, but as a robust, responsive network.

During a combat operation, a new coalition sensor becomes available that could help exploit an enemy’s vulnerability if it can be quickly integrated into the common operating environment. Within hours, engineers access the source code, coordinating with a community of programmers who review and bug-test modifications.

Days later, the command interface has been modified to import data from the new sensor. Missions are more successful, and there is unprecedented coordination with coalition forces, because the commander can implement the same software, minus a few classified modules, on the coalition network.

An open technology acquisitions strategy, including accessible source code, makes this scenario possible. Unfortunately, this kind of technological responsiveness and agility is all but impossible today, because much of the Department of Defense’s software, which is central to its operations, is bound up in proprietary systems. These “black boxes” cannot be accessed or modified by anyone but the original vendor, even though DoD nominally has rights to millions of lines of code that have cost billions of dollars to develop.

Open Source Healthcare

hopefully there will be a pile-on to share healthcare data:

Healthcare, Meet Open Source

"Medical
facilities and doctors all have their own ways of communicating and
distributing medical information much of it hard copy," Scott Handy,
vice president of worldwide Linux and open source at IBM, told internetnews.com.

"There is no good way to transmit medical information because there was no standard."

Even
with a standard in place, solutions would still be difficult to come
by, which is why IBM is open sourcing an implementation of a health
care information exchange standard.

CAPSIT Community

Interesting open source tools for public saftey:

CAPSIT makes it easy for public safety agencies to have the latest, most advanced information systems. We bring together a unique combination of technology, community lead development, open source code
and best of all no license fees for software (it doesn’t get much easier than free!). CAPSIT is constantly looking for innovative ways to keep costs low and make systems affordable to every agency, regardless of size.
CAPSIT Community

Conference to Attend: Open Source

THE conference to attend about open source and open technology development in the department of Defense, I'll be speaking, it has a really great line up of speakers.

Open Source
New DoD Paradigm, or Business as Usual?

hopefully see you there!