Perhaps you’ve wondered why gazillions of tax dollars go to the military while our soldiers in Iraq have to buy their own
body armor. I don’t have insight into the body armor issue, but I think this story illuminates the underlying problem very
well.
About nine years ago, a company in Delaware developed some software that was an immediate hit with the military. It was cheap,
easy to use, and did the job well. (I’d better not be any more specific about the nature of the software than that.) When
my company bought out that other company, the Army suddenly became our biggest customer. Initially we couldn’t get a traditional
government contract. The Army preferred to buy our software as “commercial off-the-shelf.”
Simultaneously, the Navy acquired similar software via the contractual route, making a deal with one of our competitors (I’ll
call it BodiTech). For some time the two programs coexisted peacefully. Everyone in the user community knew that the Army
used our software, and the Navy used Bodi’s.
By 1998, the Army’s user base had grown to over 400 licensed copies, and someone at the Pentagon decided that a contractual
relationship would allow them to better manage the software. Everyone assumed we would be awarded the contract, since we were
the incumbent. To our amazement, after negotiations were over, the contract went to BodiTech.
Bodi spent about a year re-engineering the Navy product at a cost of $9 million, and delivered a version that couldn’t be
installed without hosing the Army’s systems. Because Army interfaces and operations are fundamentally different from the Navy’s,
even when you got the app running, it was difficult to use. Users who loved our product protested bitterly. But their superiors
just told them the old joke about how there’s the right way, the wrong way, and the Army way -- and guess which way you’re
gonna go?
Meanwhile, the Army paid BodiTech another $5 million to fix the problems. When months passed with no joy, however, the generals
gave up. The Army issued an official statement declaring that our software was now the “system of record.”
Fast-forward five years. The Army (apparently still feeling bad about how it treated poor BodiTech) decides that BodiTech’s
program had failed because of a “poor requirements definition.” Having now spent several years developing a better list of
requirements, the Army is ready to put another contract out for bids.
But wait! Upon closer examination, it turns out that after a series of horse trades with the Navy, senior Army leadership
has bargained away its right of acquisition. The Navy will lead the search for a new “joint” software contract. And to no
one’s surprise, the Navy’s favorite software company, BodiTech, wins again.
As of three weeks ago, one year has passed since BodiTech got this contract. And what do you suppose has been delivered to
end-users? Right. Exactly nothing. Over the past five years our competitor has been awarded at least $20M of American tax
dollars, and produced nothing that the Army can use. Meantime my company has been investing its own R&D dollars, continuing
to improve and modernize our software, which users still prefer.
Is this what they mean by “Good enough for government work?”
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