The Defense Department is undertaking a comprehensive rewrite of its main acquisition guidance and that revision work will have a heavy emphasis on software development, according to a top defense acquisition official.
The department is going to “start from scratch” rewriting DOD 5000, Kevin Fahey, assistant secretary of defense for acquisition, said Wednesday during an event hosted by the National Defense Industrial Association and the Section 809 Panel. This effort is the “biggest thing on my plate” in 2019, he said.
That was from NextGov. For more on the 5000 series reform efforts over the years, see Joe Ferrara’s excellent summary.
We find that the DODD 5000.1 released in July 1971 was a scant seven pages long with 14 external reference documents. In 1975, DODI 5000.2 for information reporting was added. The number of pages and references roughly doubled. By 1977, Milestone Zero was added and the services were provided their own milestone review councils. The number of pages more than doubled again to 33. After a change in 1980 the pages stood at 60 with 136 references, and in 1991, the 5000 series regulations grew to about 900 pages before a round of streamlining.
The 5000 series grew again recently because of the tailored approaches to acquisition created for different models. It’ll be interesting to see whether they are streamlining it or adding more models to solve software problems. Here’s another article from DefenseSystems:
“We are absolutely in a situation where we are trying to change the way we do software development,” he [Fahey] said, adding that making the DOD 5000 series digital would be a challenge.
The Section 809 Panel, which is tasked by Congress improve DOD’s technology procurement practices, also proposed changes to DOD 5000 in its January report, regarding best practices for portfolio management. Fahey said the idea would be to include the panel’s recommendations while also overhauling other sections.
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