Open Source Alliance
Written by Harrison Donnelly
Cooperative agreement benefits government,
private sectors while aiding software development for
the military's business and personnel operations.
The Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) announced by DISA and the Open Source Software Institute (OSSI) is also expected to enable other federal agencies, state and local governments, private industry, academia, and the Open Source community to automate a large number of currently manual processes with no-cost software that is so intuitive for users that training is minimal or unnecessary for most applications and so bug-free that help desk calls and e-mails run fewer than five a day for a 16,000 user base.
The CRADA involves release of an open source version of DISA’s internally developed Corporate Management Information System (CMIS) for the purpose of a collaborative partnership between government, nonprofit organizations, academia and industry to research and develop state-of-the-art capabilities and functionality for DISA software for use by other organizations and the public.
The CMIS program is a Web-based federal administrative software suite, consisting of more than 50 applications, that handles human resource, training, security, acquisition and related functions for DISA’s more than 16,000 users worldwide. The program is even being used by at least one tactical site in Iraq, according to Dick Nelson, chief of the Personnel Systems Support Branch in DISA’s manpower, security and personnel organization.
To cite some examples in order to give a sense of the comprehensiveness of CMIS capabilities, the system includes a telework management application as well as an application that facilitates management of acquisition personnel certification status, with automated tracking and notifications on certification requirements, expirations and so on.
“CMIS is a core product within the DISA’s IT system,” said Jack Penkoske, DISA director of manpower, security and personnel. “We have a lot invested in the CMIS application suite, and numerous other government agencies have asked if we’d allow them to adopt CMIS for their internal use. We chose a CRADA and open source model so that we could leverage other agencies’, academic, industry and the Open Source community’s enhancements and modifications to improve DISA’s system. We believe this will be a win-win for all involved.”
“Creating an open source version of CMIS is important in several ways,” said John Weathersby, of the Open Source Software Institute. “Software developed by government employees falls under ‘public domain.’ By distributing the program under an open source license, the government retains access to the system without having to worry that they’ll have to repay for the development of something that was originally created with public funds.”
DEVELOPER SUPPORT
For years, Nelson explained, other agencies have been seeking to be able to use CMIS, in order to share in the benefits of the years of work put in by DISA developers to craft its fine-tuned business processes. But doing so raised a number of issues that had to be resolved first.
“The issues we looked at are interrelated, and we couldn’t just tackle one and feel we were done, but all in a way that allowed us to resolve them all,” Nelson explained. “One was, how do we get more developer support, because I won’t be able to hire more developers. We still need many more products to complete what we’re working on, and to maintain what we now have.”
Nelson pointed to a host of questions that needed to be answered: “How do we make this product available to everyone on as even a footing as possible, and still ensure that it’s done in a way that’s friendly to government, industry, academia and the open source community? How do we do this in a way that protects our considerable investment, time and energy for the benefit of all? How do we encourage everybody to participate in both common and individual efforts to extend and improve the product suite?
“How do we deal with potential supply and demand issues that might be created by releasing this code base in the formats we do?” he continued, “How might this be used by nonfederal organizations at other government levels, and even foreign governments, and what would be the benefits of doing so? How can we use this product to serve the greater good of the nation, both now and for the future?”
Nelson found the answers to many of these questions in the CRADA program, which was established by Congress in 1986 to facilitate transfer of government-developed technology to the private sector, while also making best use of national scientific and technical capabilities to enhance the effectiveness of Department of Defense systems.
Next, Nelson began looking for a partner, an “honest broker” with no proprietary interest. He found one in the OSSI, which brings together corporate, government, academic and open source community representatives to promote the development and implementation of open-source software solutions within government agencies and academic entities.
In setting up the agreement, officials sought to develop a process that enabled DISA to protect its investment, while at the same time allowing the partner to modify the code base and obtain copyright, then license the production back to the agency under terms that didn’t constrain either party.
As far as licensing tools, officials sought ones that would ensure that the core product and modifications to it would remain open source, while also allowing industry to create proprietary products that could work with it.
“That was critical to us,” Nelson said. “You can’t sell Open Source CMIS. But we have no issues with their selling their own proprietary work. They can also sell training, service, support, hosting and so on. We do not want industry to feel constrained by our licensing vehicles from fully participating in the growth of this product into a full ecosystem. We hope too that they will build plug-ins, which would have to be open source under the terms of our licenses, to make OS-CMIS interoperate more efficiently with their own offerings.”
MORE AND BETTER PRODUCTS
The benefits of the agreement to DISA are “more and better products to enhance our own work,” Nelson said. “I’ve got seven developers and will never have more. They work 30 to 35 projects simultaneously at any given time. Their productivity is outstanding, but they’ll never get done even if they automated everything we do, because continuous changes in federal process and regulations ensure that even the products we build need frequent tweaking to ensure they remain fully usable to our customer base. And someone else may figure out how to do what we have done better— that’s very acceptable to us. We’ll still have plenty to do.”
The agreement will also benefit the government indirectly by increasing business understanding of how federal process works, he continued. “While we have specific reasons in government for doing things the way we do, to outsiders it can seem a little Byzantine, and their products may suffer from that lack of understanding. We want everyone who produces products that could be used by the federal government to be able to get a better understanding of how it works, and thereby improve their own products. No one can patent federal process, but the better we understand it, the better we can serve and support it with all of our products.”
For academia, the initiative provides a natural operational tool that can be used to teach software development with, and to help place graduates in jobs, Nelson noted. “We are very interested in getting this pushed down into high schools, and have developed a comprehensive plan to enable students to get experience, credit for good work, and an early start on a career and experience with actual tools in use before they graduate.”
Indeed, the veteran federal employee seems especially inspired by the potential of the agreement to help nurture future generations of software developers. “I have a deep concern with the fact that even though life is increasingly automated, more and more of that development is being done in other countries. The U.S. is graduating fewer and fewer developers every year. I personally see this as being of critical strategic importance. I’d like to see that trend reversed, to ensure that we can maintain our current position in technology and the world.
“It’s harder to come from behind than to stay ahead,” he said. “Many countries are trying to overtake us, and some of them have more people who can do this kind of work than we do. We have to have enough developers, and they have to be the best that we can produce.” ♦
