FORT BELVOIR, Va. –
The Defense Logistics Agency awarded three artificial intelligence contracts, collectively worth $3.5 million, to Accenture of Arlington, Virginia; Knexus of National Harbor, Maryland; and Scale AI of San Francisco, California. This completes the final phase of the agency’s first-ever Hackathon that began in the spring.
The contracts support exploration of AI tools that will create reporting mechanisms for demand planning use cases, a customized chatbot app and virtual agents for acquisition business systems.
The Hackathon gave vendors the chance to demonstrate how their AI and machine learning capabilities could provide innovative solutions to DLA’s daily operations. One of the key objectives was to create the acquisition model needed to test, pilot and procure AI and ML technologies for specific DLA requirements.
“DLA’s goal to become a digital organization is a journey that starts with standardizing how the agency uses emerging technologies to answer DLA’s critical logistics challenges,” DLA Chief Information Officer Adarryl Roberts said. “These awards are our first attempt to expand our use of AI and create a repeatable end-to-end procurement solution.”
DLA released a broad agency announcement in March, inviting companies to provide a white paper on their capabilities and then asked for technical and cost proposals for papers it accepted.
“We were looking for vendor submissions to provide information on their data scraping techniques, using AI-powered tools with large language models and transitioning AI capabilities to a cloud environment,” DLA Research and Development Director David Koch said.
Vendors that best tailored technology solutions with a well-informed understanding of the agency’s business and supply chain dynamics were of particular interest, he added.
A DLA team of experts in research and development, AI, and cybersecurity reviewed 46 submissions based on criteria including overall scientific and technical merit, feasibility, viability, desirability, and experience and performance in AI. Submissions were further scaled down to 17 entries and then to 12.
Based on those assessments, DLA selected six vendors to present proposals at the in-person event June 24 to approximately 50 leaders representing the Defense Department, the military services, DLA and academia.
“This process is more than just the technology, it’s also about how we evaluate the vendors’ methodology, approach and processes to ensure we are advancing in the right direction, asking the right questions and working with these technologies in the best way,” Roberts said.
The technical evaluation team then re-reviewed information presented from vendors’ white papers, technical and cost proposals, and in-person demonstrations to select the three companies as winners.
“DLA recognizes AI, automation and machine learning will bring significant changes across the agency,” DLA Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Officer Linda VanDyke said. "We must examine acquisition of these technologies through this lens of responsible AI so we can fully understand future impacts to our mission.”
Embracing these technologies and applying them to appropriate use cases will be critical as DLA focuses on building more adaptive and resilient global supply chains, she added.
DLA expects to conduct its next Hackathon in 2025.