House encourages IT acquisition reform in Defense bill

The House fiscal 2011 national defense authorization bill could nudge along Defense Department acquisition reform by encouraging the Pentagon to adopt findings of the House Panel on Defense Acquisition Reform.  

The report accompanying the bill says the Pentagon should adopt panel recommendations, including promotion of an open architecture that allows modular acquisition of hardware and software, alternative acquisition milestones for IT, and a new test and evaluation approach that merges developmental and operational testing in a parallel fashion.

The bill itself would have the defense secretary fund an independent study of alternative acquisition models for network-centric technology and have the Joint Chiefs of Staff do its own similar study.

The House approved the bill on a 229 to 186 roll call vote on May 28; it now faces reconciliation with the Senate version, which has yet to be considered on the Senate floor but which did pass through the Senate Armed Services Committee on Friday.

The slow pace of information technology acquisition at the DoD has long been the cause of angst at the Pentagon, although top officials there have suggested that change is underway.

Also included in the House authorization bill is a section requiring the Pentagon to conduct an "enterprise risk assessment methodology study" of all Defense health information technology programs.

In addition, the Pentagon would also have to evaluate the current use of and potential application of modeling and simulation tools to identify likely cybersecurity methodologies.

Passage of the bill faced opposition from social conservatives upset at its repeal of the "don't ask, don't tell" statute limiting gays' involvement in the military. The Senate Armed Services Committee markup also repeals the statute, paving the way for gays to serve openly in the military.

For more:
- see the THOMAS page for H.R. 5136, which includes links to the authorization bill's text and accompanying reports

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