Page 26 - FCW, November/December 2021

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Why DOD
is so bad
at buying Isoftware
The Defense Department wants to acquire emerging technology faster and more efficiently. But will its latest attempts to streamline its processes be enough?
BY LAUREN C. WILLIAMS
sification levels. It wasn’t DOD’s first cloud purchase, but it was a big one. However, the potentially $10 billion con- tract was subjected to intense political scrutiny and years of lawsuits and pro- tests fueled by accusations of favoritism in how the contract was awarded.
DOD officials canceled JEDI and shifted to a multi-cloud, multi-vendor alternative called the Joint Warfighter Cloud Capability. In the meantime, the department still lacks the central cloud capability detailed in the JEDI solicita- tion in 2017.
The problem isn’t a lack of money.
N MANY RESPECTS, the Defense in the first place,” Dean Hullings, global Department is one of the world’s defense solutions strategist at Forescout largest technology organizations, Technologies, told FCW. It also “opens but it has trouble buying IT, partic- up doors for other people to say, ‘Well, ularly when it comes to software. wait a minute. We weren’t part of this. We
It can take years for DOD to make it have capabilities, too.’ And that prolongs
through the process for buying a tech- nology — whether it’s a new fighter jet, tactical radios or the latest version of Microsoft Office — and by that time, the technology is already out of date.
“Software advances every 12 to 18 months, so you’re at least one iteration if not two iterations behind in the decisions that you made to get the program going
the actual acquisition process.”
He added that the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) program is emblematic of DOD’s challenges with buying emerging technology. Pentagon officials wanted a cloud service that would enable civilian personnel and warfighters to securely access and share data and digital tools at the highest clas-
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RAUL ARIAS