Page 15 - FCW, May 30, 2016

Commentary|GREG O’CONNELL
Let’s put the ‘funded’ back in FFRDC
Greg O’Connell is director of Federal and FSI Sales at Nutanix.
Federally funded research and development centers are vital test beds for new IT, but they can’t operate without adequate resources
Federally funded research and devel- opment centers — federally sponsored private/public organizations that con- duct research on behalf of the govern- ment — are an essential mechanism for evaluating innovative solutions for the government. That process helps allevi- ate some of the barriers to adoption, including lengthy certification and accreditation requirements that can delay deployments and the excessive reliance on legacy platforms. Unfortunately, government fund-
ing for FFRDCs has decreased dramatically in the past few years, limiting their ability to deliver that type of service on a large scale.
Among other functions, FFRDCs are responsible for testing and prevalidating emerging technolo- gies in the public sector. As Defense Acquisition University put it, they are “unique nonprofit entities sponsored and funded by the U.S. govern-
ment to meet some special long- term research or development need which cannot be met as effectively by existing in-house or contractor resources.”
Given their public/private
nature, FFRDCs are unique in their approach and their value because they bring new, better technolo-
gies into the government space that otherwise would not have existed. They provide the government with alternatives to its traditional avenues of acquisition, which often make it difficult to introduce new IT into the federal procurement cycle.
Despite the enormous value of those institutions — which range
from the Energy Department’s national laboratories to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab — their federal fund- ing has been falling in recent years. A National Science Foundation study found that “federal funding
has consistently accounted for over 96 percent of FFRDC’s total R&D expenditures since 2001, but these federally funded expenditures have been declining since a high of $18 bil- lion reported in FY 2010.”
FFRDCs could enable agencies to make requests for innovation instead of relying on the status quo.
As a result, the ability of FFRDCs to test and prevalidate new solutions for the public sector has declined as well. That must change.
Current government requests for proposals and requests for informa- tion tend to favor legacy systems and incumbents, curtailing the possibil- ity for real innovation. As a result, agencies are suffering from being anchored to the status quo.
For example, despite mandates such as the Federal Data Center Con- solidation Initiative and Executive Order 13693, which call for substan- tial reductions to federal data center space and energy metrics, Congress recently gave 15 agencies a grade of
F for data center consolidation. That lack of progress can be attributed, at least in part, to the government’s dependence on legacy systems.
That dependence has become a 75 percent run-rate expense line on the annual budget and is preventing our public servants from using modern technology to achieve their missions.
In order for agencies to take full advantage of innovative technolo- gies, the hurdles associated with assessing, procuring and deploying them must be reduced.
Increasing funding to FFRDCs is a practical, low-risk way to improve the situation.
Allowing FFRDCs to test and evaluate new technologies, serve as a sort of incubator for innovation and provide the stamp of approval on the effectiveness, security and reliability of solutions would be a significant step toward fixing the government’s innovation problem. It could enable agencies to make requests for inno- vation instead of relying on the status quo, cut down on the time associated with the certification and accredita- tion process and help alleviate some of the perceived risks of adoption.
By increasing funding for FFRDCs, the government could con- tinue to reap the benefits of innova- tion. Digital forensic advancements, the Traffic Collision Avoidance System and the Mars Exploration Rover Mission all originated from the FFRDC program.
We must invest to find, test and certify the next generation of govern- ment-changing innovations. n
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