Held at Lockheed Martin’s Bethesda headquarters, the two-day meeting covered many matters of consequence to government contractors. From U.S Supreme Court Justice Alito’s opinion on the equitable tolling claim of the Menominee Indian Tribe (which was denied) to a spirited inquest into ways to induce or compel a federal agency to comply with federal law and regulations (with extreme difficulty), the committee and its consultant Steve Knight (Smith Pachter McWhorter PLC) reviewed the most significant federal procurement-related cases, regulations and laws of the last three months.
Among these were the key acquisition policy provisions included in the final version of the FY2016 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
For example, Section 888, Standards for Procurement of Secure Information Technology and Cyber Security Systems, requires a United States Department of Defense (DoD) evaluation of various public, open technology standards for IT and cybersecurity acquisitions, including the DoD’s own Open Trusted Technology Provider Standard (OTTPS).
In addition to this mandated study, which would focus on the impact of open systems on innovation, the U.S. House Armed Services Committee is looking at ways to bring acquisition and innovation cycles into sync . The defense industry has viewed this issue as a balance between the DoD’s need for open, systems that are vendor interchangeable versus the industry’s need to protect proprietary IP to incent innovation and collaborative efforts to develop flexible technology solutions.
One industry proposal currently under review by the Acquisition Reform Working Group (ARWG), which was distributed to the CGB at the February meeting, recommended the adoption of “open architecture” over “open system” standards, to achieve this balance in so-called “software intensive systems.”
Open architecture standards would enable the rapid substitution of proprietary “black box” modular solutions by rigorously defining key, non-proprietary, external interfaces between modules. With open interfaces, DoD would be able to add or substitute modules as needed, without compromising valuable IP.
In contrast, the current DoD Open Systems Architecture (OSA) Guidebook requires that qualified third parties be able to “add, modify, replace, remove or provide support for a component of a system, based on open standards and published interfaces for the component of that system.” The ability of a third party to “modify” or “provide support” implies direct access to the original contractor’s “black box” IP. Industry would prefer that DoD move to open architecture standards that protect IP and foster innovation. Unlike open systems, open architecture would not discourage private investment, not incent contractors to hold back their most innovative solutions, and not deter non-traditional and commercial vendors from competing with established defense contractors for government contracts.