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TITLE VIII--ACQUISITION POLICY, ACQUISITION MANAGEMENT, AND RELATED MATTERS

Subtitle G—Other Matters

P. L. 114-

House Conference Report. 114-270

(a) Business case analysis.—Not later than one year after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Deputy Chief Management Officer, the Chief Information Officer of the Department of Defense, and the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics shall jointly complete a business case analysis to determine the most effective and efficient way to procure and deploy common information technology services.

(b) Elements.—The business case analysis required by subsection (a) shall include an assessment of whether the Department of Defense should—

(1) either—

(A) acquire a unified set of commercially provided common or enterprise information technology services, including such services as messaging, collaboration, directory, security, and content delivery; or

(B) allow the military departments and other components of the Department to acquire such services separately;

(2) either—

(A) acquire such services from a single provider that bundles all of the services; or

(B) require that each common service be independently defined and use open standards to enable continuous adoption of best commercial technology; and

(3) enable availability of multiple versions of each type of service and application to enable choice and competition while supporting interoperability where necessary.

The Senate amendment contained a provision (sec. 873) that would require the Department of Defense to conduct a business case analysis to determine the most effective and efficient way to acquire common services across Department of Defense (DOD) networks and ensure interoperability and competition.

The House bill contained no similar provision.

The House recedes with a technical amendment.

Senate Report 114-49 to accompany S. 1376 as it was reported out of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Unified information technology services (sec. 873)

The committee recommends a provision that would require the Deputy Chief Management Officer (DCMO), the Chief Information Officer (CIO), and the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics to jointly conduct a business case analysis, with assistance from the Director of Cost Analysis and Program Evaluation, as appropriate, to determine the most effective and efficient way to acquire common services across Department of Defense (DOD) networks.

The provision also would require the Secretary of Defense, within 180 days of the enactment of this Act, in consultation with the DCMO and CIO, to establish a governance mechanism and process to ensure essential interoperability across DOD networks.

The provision would require that the business case analysis include an assessment of whether DOD should (1) acquire a single set of commercially provided enterprise services for DOD, or allow the military departments and other components to acquire their own; (2) acquire such services as an integrated set from a single provider, or require that each service can be separately acquired; and (3) acquire multiple versions of each type of service, for services where there is no commercial standard that ensures interoperability across vendor products, to enable interoperability while supporting choice and competition.

The committee is aware that the CIO, the Defense Information Systems Agency, and the military services are monitoring the rapidly advancing commercial technology and offerings for enterprise services, and, in many instances are already capitalizing on these commercial offerings. The committee is also aware that the CIO is now focusing on developing a path forward. The committee is concerned that the scope of the ongoing review is too narrow and that the CIO lacks the tools and authority to implement solutions that are necessary to achieve efficiencies and interoperability.