Government IT is at a strategic inflection point—time to think differently. Yes, government capability delivery can parallel commercial practices and deliver faster, cheaper, and better capabilities. We not only believe this is possible, but it is within reach. The discussions herein frame a path to this transformation. The key to success is to see the problem as a puzzle and address all the puzzle pieces concurrently.
When addressed at the right enterprise-level, this transformation is not only easier than it appears but self-funding. Yes, self-funding. Agencies can achieve more, for less, faster with no additional funding. Some agencies already have most of the pieces in place but are not orchestrating them in a way for them to work together constructively. Without this orchestration, each piece creates impediments to the others and obstructs achieving the intended goals. It is critical that this orchestration occurs at the right level of the enterprise given that execution units, like pieces in a puzzle, usually are required to follow established acquisition and engineering lifecycles.
What is this site about?
The purpose of this site is to discuss an approach for government agencies to realize the gains of the ongoing Commercial IT revolution. The approach is meant to be scaled incrementally to the enterprise level via a greenfield/brownfield program partitioning. While the approach should work for most government organizations, how it is realized on a given agency will depend on how the agency is structured. In general, the discussion will be based on an agency where Mission execution is separate from Capability development, and capability development is organized along functional lines. Integrated Project Organizations are expected to realize the same benefits with easier implementation.
There is a lot to discuss. In time we will cover mission capability development, Global infrastructure support, and service-based acquisition models, and engineering lifecycles. We will treat agile and cloud as pull-push contexts that enable each other.