The Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) is working to create pathways that bypass entrenched processes within the department’s ecosystem – which have become barriers to bringing innovative solutions into the Department of Defense (DoD), a senior official said on Thursday.
“[We] are working on solutions – creative solutions – to address barriers like the [authority to operate] process and contractual levers to help companies navigate the department more effectively,” said Kedar Pavgi, director of Commercial Strategy and Operations at DIU, during the GovCIO Defense IT Summit on Feb. 27.
According to Pavgi, one solution his team has begun testing to address these “barriers of entry” is by stretching the bounds of prize lines authority, or prize authority.
Pavgi explained that, according to statute 10, USC, 4025, prize challenges are recognized as competitive activities, which can then lead to follow-on work from a contractual standpoint.
“So if you’re on a prize challenge, immediately, you should be able to take that activity to a contracting officer who could then award a follow-on contract, whether it’s a prototype or a transaction contract, or something more capable, like a silver or silver contract,” he said.
This provision, Pavgi explained, has not been widely utilized, “despite its potential to streamline the process and create new opportunities for innovation within the department.”
Pavgi explained that despite these barriers, creative solutions exist to “build out the pathway, so to speak. When you show this within the department, the ability to do all of this exists. It’s just a matter of us being proactive by using the powers we have to help companies navigate the department.”
GAO Recommends Improvements for DIU to Track Progress
The pathways that Pavgi and his team are developing could help the DoD’s commercial technology agency address DoD’s most critical needs. But recent criticism from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) highlights that DIU needs a “data-driven decision-making process” to track progress under these pathways. Without it, the agency will struggle to measure any true success, the government watchdog agency said.
According to the GAO, DIU is already struggling to track the progress it has made in more effectively adopting cutting-edge commercial technology for the military.
“DIU established a flexible award process to demonstrate that commercial technology can quickly deliver capabilities to the warfighter and is now shifting its focus under DIU 3.0 to address the DoD’s most critical operational needs. This process defines goals and collects, assesses, and uses evidence to inform decisions,” the report states.
DIU 3.0 outlines the organization’s expanded role and eight key efforts to help the DoD leverage commercial tech to counter growing adversarial threats. These include addressing capability gaps, partnering with the DoD’s “engines of scale,” enhancing innovation collaborations, and strengthening tech partnerships with international allies. The strategy also focuses on building trust, retooling DIU, and offering “dual fluency” advice to top defense leaders.
However, the report notes that DIU has not set clear performance goals or metrics to assess progress toward achieving these strategic objectives. Additionally, DIU officials have not identified which performance data to collect to guide their decisions.
“While DIU officials plan to establish goals in the future, they have not specified a timeline. As DIU works to overcome challenges in adopting commercial technologies for strategic impact within the DoD, a robust, data-driven decision-making process will be crucial for leadership to track progress,” the report reads.
GAO also highlighted opportunities for DIU to enhance collaboration with other DoD innovation organizations, such as the newly formed Defense Innovation Community of Entities, which follows six of the GAO’s eight leading collaboration practices.
“But [DIU] has not developed and documented how it will assess its progress in meeting its goal of coordinating activities related to commercial technology adoption,” the report says. “Without assessing collaboration, DIU will not know if the group is making progress toward its goal.”
GAO made six recommendations to DIU, including: establishing performance goals and metrics for DIU 3.0; creating a process to collect, assess, and use performance data for DIU 3.0; and developing a method to evaluate collaboration within the defense innovation community.
DIU concurred with GAO’s recommendations.
