Pentagon Moving Procurement System to the Web

Yesterday, DID talked about ongoing efforts in the US Department of Defense toward procurement reform. We covered the pressures, some players, and some major developments, but smaller efforts are also worthy of coverage. Computerworld reports he U.S. Department of Defense is gearing up to move its once-beleaguered Procurement Desktop-Defense 2 (PD2) procurement system from a client/server model to the Web. These efforts will result in distribution on 40,000 desktops, up from the current total of 23,000 desktops at 800 DOD locations worldwide. The move to the Web is a significant milestone for the SPS program, which halted development of PD2 for a year beginning in 2002 after facing harsh criticism from the Government Accountability Office. This Computerworld article highlights the efforts undertaken to fix the project, including better customer involvement and requirements generation, overhauls to the IT architecture that shifted the system from custom-coding linkages to Webmethods XML adapters, and improved documentation processes. Read the whole article here.