Award fees doled out to contractors for meeting timeline and performance standards should be applied to incentivize greater use of open architecture (OA) principles, according to a recently released Pentagon guidebook intended to promote development of OA systems.
To get better performance from contractors, federal regulations allow program managers to assess cost, schedule, management and technical attributes in determining award fees.
The DoD Open Systems Architecture Contract Guidebook calls for adding OA criteria to the “technical” category by evaluating whether technical data rights have been delivered to the program with minimal propriety claims and unjustified limitations on the government’s use of the information.
The Pentagon released a draft version of the guidebook in December to bring about more use of open architecture by embracing commercially available technologies, and hardware and software reuse. The goal is to enhance innovation and commonality among systems to ease upgrades and reduce costs. OA standards are viewed with added importance in an era of reduced defense spending.
The 155-page guidebook provides program managers with a checklist for adopting OA. Among the suggestions is applying award fees for contractors who meet open architecture standards.
“Incentivizing technical excellence in the program is an important aspect of the program acquisition strategy and is usually applied with award fees or award terms,” the document said. “The same approach should be used in encouraging appropriate (open systems architecture) business and technical practices.”
The guidebook identified two dozen areas where program managers can grade a system on its OA merits. Among them are commonality and reuse of components; the degree to which components already are or can be used in other systems; identification of possible reuse; modularity; maximum use of commercial-off-the-shelf technologies; open interfaces; and ease of rapid upgrades.
The document also urges program managers to place greater focus on outcomes rather than processes.
“Programs should attempt to link awards to outcomes wherever possible–moving from rewarding compliance with technical or process requirements towards achievements of desirable outcomes,” the manual said.
One key struggle in the move toward open architecture is data rights. If the government is unable to attain the data rights, it can find itself beholden to a single contractor and out of position to re-compete the program, a problem known as “vendor lock.”
Companies that view the data as proprietary have expressed reluctance to surrender data rights, fearing that making the data available would result in lost business opportunities and its use by a potential competitor.
But the Pentagon has been moving to get control of the data rights so they can be distributed later to hold competitions for upgrading systems or inserting the latest technology more quickly. It’s a critical part of the effort to introduce open architecture systems, officials have said.
“Data rights are fundamental to breaking out of vendor locked relationships and are valuable for supporting increased transparency across the enterprise,” the document said. “When the government does not possess the data rights needed to re-compete an existing program, they typically become vender locked.”