A Platform Across the Valley of Death: Tech Transition via Open Enterprise Information System Development

Abstract

Achieving “Tech Transfer”, i.e. “an invention usefully adopted,” is difficult, particularly within the Defense Enterprise. The Defense acquisition system is designed to transition technology through a long serial process ill suited for Information Technology (IT). However, there is a successful commercial practice for transitioning IT called “Product Line Architecture” (PLA). PLA optimizes a specified open standard technical framework around specific, measurable, enterprise business objectives and streamlined process. There are no legal or technical barriers that prevent the Defense Enterprise from adapting PLA to leverage the IT marketplace for transition of information centric capabilities. However, several fundamental paradigm shifts in policies and perceptions are required, namely: specify open system approaches in context with measurable and testable business objectives, as part of procurement requirements i.e. Defense Enterprise PLA; virtualize inheritable security controls into open standard IT infrastructure; Base procurement award and performance incentives on demonstrated Validation and Verification (V&V) against value-based metrics, including for reuse of existing components and infrastructure; apply expert systems technologies -- per Computer Assisted Design (CAD), TurboTax, and workflow automation -- to automate the Enterprise Information System (EIS) design and compliance process; establish a persistent, distributed, “PlugTest” virtual environment based on Defense Enterprise PLA to implement and nurture eco-system per all the above; use the PlugTest environment to catalyze a COTS marketplace around Defense Enterprise IT requirements.