Defense launches 12 pilots

Stenbit memo

The Defense Department's chief information officer earlier this month announced 12 pilot programs as part of DOD's Rapid Acquisition Incentive-Net Centricity program.

Defense officials launched the program in May to develop products and services that support the Pentagon's efforts to use information networks to transform military operations. The incentive will focus commercial technology and procurement practices to shorten the time it takes to develop and field systems.

The pilot projects will advance principles of network-centric warfare, produce "proof of concept" examples and provide results applicable departmentwide, said DOD's CIO, John Stenbit, in a memo issued to much of the military's upper echelons.

Priscilla Guthrie, DOD's deputy CIO, said the department's push toward network centricity would accelerate as the research and development efforts of the past several years begin to bear fruit.

"This effort will enable us to jump-start initiatives to transform the department to assist in achieving our goal of net centricity, so timely and accurate information is available not only for the warfighters and decision-makers, but for individuals at all levels within DOD," Guthrie said in a statement.

The Navy's eBusiness Operations Office was selected in June to spearhead the program. The Navy was selected because it already had pilot and program management offices in place and therefore could expand on its existing structure rather than starting from scratch.

Stenbit said DOD expects to file between five and 20 pilot projects each year, with each pilot running between six and 12 months. In this particular round, the pilots are between four and 12 months long, with costs ranging from $375,000 to $1 million.

The two largest pilots selected, each for $1 million over 12 months, are the Global Force Management Enterprise Data Initiative and Rapid Acquisition Incentive-Enterprise Services (RAI-ES).

The initiative involves delivering a subset of global force management data to military planners in a network-centric environment. RAI-ES will provide a network that unifies the architecture approach, development and configuration management of enterprise services spanning DOD.