An early evaluation of the Army’s most recent Industry Day to acquaint industry with the Network Integration Evaluation (NIE) and agile acquisition process “absolutely” achieved service aims, an officer said.
“We want to be very clear that we see industry as our partner in developing this network,” Col. Dan Hughes, Director, System of Systems Integration Directorate, told Defense Daily. “We really want to move as fast as we can to procure what industry can provide us, and we want their innovation to drive how we’re doing this.”
There were more than 275 representatives from 55 companies, he said.
The service plans more and better Industry Days in the future as the semi-annual NIE process moves forward.
For example, Hughes related one bit of industry feedback from the Jan. 11 event was that if a representative went to the first Industry Day, the briefings the second time around were along the same lines and took too long. That will be modified.
This January, Industry Day was really the second part of the Industry Day held in September 2011.
The September day introduced industry to the sites and integration facilities at Ft. Bliss, Texas and White Sands Missile Range, N.M., where Brigade Modernization Command soldiers conduct the evaluations.
The January, Industry Day showcased the integration lab at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md. This is where the NIE and agile acquisition process begins, where industry brings its equipment solutions to fill the gaps the Army identifies as part of its sources sought process.
Aberdeen is where the Army takes that industry-furnished equipment, puts it on a bench in the integration facility, integrates it to see if it does what the Army expects and industry says it will do.
The network is built in those facilities, and when the work is done and the equipment works, it goes to Ft. Bliss for soldier evaluation.
“We’re almost to the point where we have the process the way we want the process,” Hughes said. About a month’s worth of construction and emplacing equipment still needs to be done on the integration lab.
“By NIE 13.1 we’ll be fully operational,” he said.
The integration lab at Aberdeen can find equipment issues in an isolated fashion, but will find issues with the equipment as part of the network, as well.
“Everything on that network affects everything on the network,” he said. Now, “I’ll be able to do that in the integration facility before I go and spend a lot of money installing a lot of equipment.”
The integration labs save time and money and will help reduce the time it takes the service to buy equipment.
Right now, if the service finds something it wants, what Hughes called, “bright shiny objects,” it would integrate it downrange in Iraq or Afghanistan. If the equipment didn’t do what was expected, or was very complicated to install, often time, money and effort was wasted.
This led the Army Vice Chief of Staff to direct that everything go through the NIE process before going downrange. “That’s how we’re going to save time, money and effort and pick the right things to buy regularly,” he said.
While the older acquisition process puts a program together and 10 years later the service buys the equipment and fields it to the entire Army, “we’re going to buy the newest technology more often,” Hughes said.
“Information technology moves that fast, he said. “We’ve got to start keeping up with the changes in IT, be as agile as we can, buying what’s new and what makes sense.”
Industry wants the process to move faster, especially on the procurement front.
Hughes said “what I wanted them to get out of the Industry Day, both at White Sands and here is: this is the environment you’re going to have to work in. We want them to have the entire process in front of them so they know coming in exactly what’s expected out of them.”
The service is working to make it a very transparent process.
Particularly, if the Army agile acquisition works with the network, it can likely translate to other acquisition programs.
“I believe this is a forerunner for what we’re going to do with the rest of the materiel development community,” Hughes said. Moving to have quicker requirements, quicker procurement and better fielding and smaller fielding to soldiers. So we don’t go spend a lot of money to find out something doesn’t work.
In fact, while he can’t reveal the product, Hughes said the Army is working to buy a piece of equipment from NIE 12.1. It will be done in a competitive manner, to drive cost down.