DLA Research & Development's recently established Acquisition Modernization Technology Research program assesses acquisition and procurement processes, uncovers and prioritizes areas that would benefit from IT modernization or advanced technologies, evaluates technical requirements and pursues future research efforts for DLA.
Business Processes
Global dynamics have shifted, creating unique challenges for defense acquisition. Defense market competition is dramatically more complex and data-driven. Speed of change requires agile and knowledge-driven processes to strengthen our enduring advantages.
Marketing Intelligence
An increased understanding of supplier markets through improved market sector analysis will enable closer supplier relationships, improved resiliency, and informed decision-making to drive best value across the acquisition lifecycle.
Commercial Industry Opportunities
DLA is exploring commercial best practices, such as advanced e-commerce or e-marketplace platforms. Leveraging existing commercial capabilities will enable rapid process transition upon full-scale implementation.
Innovation & Technology
Identifying solutions to:
- Improve contract award and management
- Streamline purchasing
- Automate repetitive, rule-based tasks
- Support and improve processes and data
Exploring potential uses of the following technologies:
- Artificial Intelligence
- Machine Learning
- Natural Language Processing
- Blockchain
Strategic Thrusts
- Identify and incorporate emerging technologies across DLA acquisition processes
- Gather and apply enhanced market intelligence
- Leverage commercial best practices
Program Focus Areas
DLA will create a strategic, integrated and approach preparing our acquisition workforce to handle future challenges by:
- Strengthening our knowledge-rich acquisition workforce
- Applying innovative processes
- Leveraging a connected and secure supply chain
- Capitalizing on emerging technology
- Maximizing enterprise IT modernization
- Integrating data science and analytics
- Gathering and applying enhanced market intelligence
- Deepening industry engagement for innovation
Benefits
- Increased speed-to-procurement created by enhanced customer support through enriched systems/tools
- Expanded market intelligence to drive improved pricing, strengthen vendor base and reduce supply risk
- Improved product quality and maximized value from accessible and assured suppliers
- Informed decision-making enabled by new tools that provide information visibility
- Increased competition among high quality suppliers
Partners
- DLA Major Subordinate Commands
- DLA Staff Directorates
- Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)
- Military Services and Federal Agencies
Ongoing Efforts
- Applied Market Intelligence for Defense Acquisition (AMIDA) is a DLA enterprise-wide effort; includes the continuous process of gathering, analyzing, and acting upon relevant industry, supplier and pricing data to improve spending strategies and business outcomes. The next phase will explore AI/ML use cases for gathering and analyzing market intelligence.
- Contract Quality Control (CQC) is conducting discovery, feasibility analysis, and solution prototyping to support requirements development for a data-driven system to manage the quality of DLA awarded contracts. The current focus is on piloting a dashboard in ServiceNow and exploring potential AI/ML use cases for improving contract quality.