Can the Navy accelerate its commercial technology acquisition without running afoul of the government’s often-complex procurement regulations? That’s a central goal in the launch of the Navy Innovation Cell, an initiative officials hope will boost buying power within the service and, eventually, across the Defense Department.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Navy Innovation Cell aims to harness industry’s investments in technology and insert them into naval operations more quickly, tapping into innovation that can elude DoD, officials said at the program’s March 27 industry day in Vienna, Virginia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“What we’re really talking about is how to bring mature commercial technology to bear within the Navy, faster,” said Jeff Frailey, innovation cell operations lead in the Navy program executive office \u2013 enterprise information systems. “As an organization we can provide a more rigorous framework, we can adopt faster, we can deploy scalable within the Navy \u2013 that is our version of innovation, leveraging the technology that [industry] provides. So with this endeavor we’re truly declaring no more science projects. We’re not going to just be in the lab anymore, giving technology a virtual thumbs-up, and then beginning this long process of how we develop and certify.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the first areas the innovation cell will address: big data analytics. The Navy is looking for big data analytics solutions to overhaul personnel management, among other areas that need better, data-driven decision-making. It’s “a prime example of where we need a lot of education on our end,” Frailey said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But those big-data tools have to be able to function on the Navy’s existing IT infrastructure, Laura Knight, the lead on the big data program, emphasized at the event.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“We have what we have. We have to be able to make it work with the infrastructure we have \u2013 at least, that’s what we think. But you might have other ideas, and we want to hear them,” Knight said. “We want to be able to use statistical methods. There’s a lot of stuff out there about visualizing data, but the big goal here is to discover previously unknown relationships. We can already do a lot of analysis on structured data and see things. It’s the things we can’t see that we’re looking for.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The big-data program and other innovation cell initiatives focus on better acquisition practices that can keep up with the pace of technological change, but as officials pointed out, that must happen within current regulatory parameters like the Federal Acquisition Regulation and DoD 5000.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“It might sound somewhat contradictory, but it’s not, because it’s about how we identify and make more common patterns and best practices that we find during these pilots and in transitions. [For example,] when to use a certain contract vehicle, how to perform a quick assessment that will actually meet the needs of a business case analysis,” said Andrew Mansfield, Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center Atlantic’s executive for network centric development and integration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Identifying those best practices and patterns, and integrating them into Navy and DoD buying, are also key goals of the innovation cell, Mansfield said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Those are the sorts of things we’re hoping to get out of this as much as anything else, how to make those transitions more quickly so we can take those patterns and best practices and get them into the bulk of DoD acquisition, while compliant, and quicker,” he said. “Because that’s where a lot of the problems are, frankly. If you look at the FAR and DoD 5000\u2026there’s a lot of bureaucracy that’s grown up around it. So we just have to focus on how we do the innovation cell process and get technology in quicker.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Navy Innovation Cell will test-drive new strategies for fielding commercial technology.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":47750,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":16,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"coauthors":[2772],"class_list":["post-15842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-it-networks"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"IZUD6MM4XNCJXKNDANKIBBQ74M","arc_canonical_url":"\/it-networks\/2015\/03\/27\/navy-s-innovation-cell-fast-tracks-new-technologies\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n