According to the Director of the Pentagon’s Strategic Capabilities Office (SCO), the SCO is focusing more on software than hardware, and trying to pivot the department to becoming a data-driven organization, as reported by Fedscoop from the SXSW Conference in Austin, Texas.
Given the latest trends in budgets for the Defense sector, this could be good news to software vendors, and those innovative technology companies looking at the Pentagon to expand their federal market presence.
Roper also stated that other SCO goals include changing focus from hardware to software at the Pentagon, given the issues related to cyber vulnerabilities in defense hardware systems, and discussed here on the Public Spend Forum.
In regards to data, Roper said that changing the culture at the Pentagon is imperative. This paradigm shift includes treating data as a strategic resource, and thinking more like private companies about how they use artificial intelligence and machine learning, and also how data can be used to train machines.
Software and big data vendors should take these words to heart, and continue looking for opportunities to help the SCO and other Pentagon offices make better use of software capabilities, to include cybersecurity.