DoD stands up 'SWAT team' to help speed software acquisition

Federal Drive with Tom Temin

It’s been four years since the Defense Department created six new acquisition pathways — including one specifically intended to speed up software acquisition. But as often happens with policy reforms, implementation is off to a slow start, so officials are building a cadre of software experts at the Pentagon to help speed up adoption.

DoD created the software acquisition pathway as part of a broader overhaul to make its acquisition system more “adaptive” to the particular products or services the department buys. The software pathway in particular came out of a recognition that most of DoD’s traditional approaches were geared toward large weapons systems. It’s designed to encourage rapid development and close coordination with users, and also eliminates some steps of the traditional acquisition process that don’t make sense for software.

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