The Pentagon is seeking opportunities to introduce competition and open systems designs not only in new programs but also with already-fielded systems to help keep sustainment costs down.
Speaking at Defense Daily’s Open Architecture Summit, Katrina McFarland, assistant secretary of defense for acquisition, said it is never too late to introduce open architecture principles into a program. An August 2014 handbook, Guidelines for Creating and Maintaining a Competitive Environment for Supplies and Services in the Department of Defense, outlines various opportunities at all stages of a program’s lifecycle. McFarland said the Pentagon has been busy working with program managers since the handbook’s publication is to identify and pursue these opportunities where it makes sense.
For example, she described a scenario of a tank deployed overseas that finds itself breaking down more often than anticipated. When the maintenance community takes a closer look, the motors are failing at a higher rate than predicted when the tank was being designed and tested. The culprit: finer sand overseas than in the United States, where the testing took place.
“So the engineers get together and say, we need a new filter,” she said, which can be done in an open systems, competitive environment rather than going back to the original equipment manufacturer. “Saves millions of dollars by just having someone look at the part which could be openly competed to insert into that system.”
McFarland said the handbook outlines a variety of scenarios like that in which the principles of open architecture aren’t used to replace a non-open system, but rather are inserted as necessary when opportunities arise.
Also in her speech, McFarland addressed some misconceptions regarding the government’s interest in intellectual property rights. She said the Defense Department doesn’t want to take companies’ “secret sauce” and interfere with their ability to make money in the future.
“Just because you can assert your rights doesn’t mean that you need to or want to,” she said. “What you need to understand is the purpose for that material and what your objectives are for its use in the future. And if you can be articulate, and most [program managers] are once they’re asked the question, you will have support for what you’re trying to do.”
Where a program manager is going to drive up cost–and where the Pentagon is working with them more closely to stop this behavior in its tracks–is when they “think of it in terms of the checklist mentality–IP (intellectual property) is good and therefore I must have all IP and I’m going to put all of these clauses into my contract and I’m going to buy every bit of IP that’s there–why? Is it worth the bang? I should be able to have discreet rationale for every element of what I buy in IP.”