Effectiveness of Software Sustainment

Abstract

Government leaders' policy decisions can significantly impact the acquisition of weapon systems for warfighters. Two such decisions were made in 1998 and 2004 within the U.S. Army. While these decisions may impact system acquisition, they can also affect important sub-elements of the acquisition process, such as sustainment support of software operating within systems. This study researched software sustainment support within the Army Command, Control, Communications, Computer, Intelligence, Sustainment, and Reconnaissance (C4ISR) community following enactment of these two acquisition policy decisions. Specifically, the study researched the perception of user/operators, Program Executive Officer/Program Manager (PEO/PM) personnel, and software sustainment support activity (SSSA) personnel about the quality, cost, timeliness, and thoroughness of software support before and after these two policy decisions. The study also assessed differences in the perception of software support within different sectors of the C4ISR community. Constrained by limited response to the research survey, the study results were based on a very small sample of the Army C4ISR community. The study was also unable to control other factors that could have influenced perception of software sustainment support. Within these constraints, the study indicates that, in general, perceptions of software sustainment support are the same or have only slightly improved since the two policy decisions. However, various sectors of the Army C4ISR community have different ideas about which aspects of software sustainment support should be further improved. While most PEO/PM personnel believe improvements are required in areas of the timeliness of software upgrades and system accreditation, most SSSA personnel believe improvements are required in the cost of field software support.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
May 01, 2011
Accession Number
ADA549309

Entities

People

  • Steven C. Cooper

Organizations

  • Defense Acquisition University

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • C4I
  • Human Systems

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Acquisition
  • Air Force
  • Application Software
  • Army Procurement
  • Computer Programs
  • Computers
  • Department Of Defense
  • Engineering
  • Governments
  • Information Systems
  • Life Cycle Management
  • Logistics
  • Military Acquisition
  • Software Development
  • Statistical Analysis
  • System Software
  • Weapon Systems

Fields of Study

  • Computer science

Readers

  • Cybersecurity.
  • Logistics and Supply Chain Management.
  • Naval Mine Countermeasure Systems Development.

Technology Areas

  • Fully Networked C3
  • Fully Networked C3 - Command and Control