The U.S. Army is looking to solve some key challenges for its contractors with a new digital center of excellence and a small “cell” unit to help with software development and acquisition specifically.
The service branch’s Chief Information Officer Leonel Garciga, who was appointed to his post last year, said that some of the Army’s most fast-moving and innovative commercial partners are sometimes forced to “go backward to deliver” to meet their requests, while their tried and true partners have been hemmed in by the branch’s traditional processes, MeriTalk reports.
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2024 Wash100 Award winner Garciga has revealed that the new acquisition bodies will be rolled out in a simultaneous dual approach: the digital center of excellence for contracting will be established and headquartered at the Army Contracting Command at Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland, while the software-focused cell will live in the office of the Army CIO at the Pentagon.
The cell, Garciga said, will be “focused on helping either big programs or really critical programs in the Army run through the wickets of a better software contract,” consulting with software experts and engineers to determine best-fit agile contracts and task orders to offer.
Meanwhile, with the COE, Garciga and his team are beginning with a manageably sized team and purview and expanding from there. He said that during April and into May, “we’re going to codify that with a charter and start getting some of the official projects kicked off.”
While the COE and software expertise cell are beginning as government-only outfits, the Army CIO said they plan to incorporate members of industry quite soon.
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