The Pentagon announced a new “Defense Innovation Advisory Board.”
The board will “enhance DoD’s culture, organization and processes by tapping innovators from the private sector, in Silicon Valley and beyond.” Its objective will be to provide advice on the best and latest practices in innovation that the department can emulate.
Secretary Carter’s aggressive agenda if enhance DoD’s tech capabilities is well underway. Last week he announced the Pentagon’s “Hackers Program,” the first federal government initiative to offer awards “hackers” who can spot vulnerabilities in certain Pentagon systems.
In recent weeks Congress has criticized U.S. digital capabilities—notably the inability to comprehensively unearth intelligence from open source and social media sites—with Representative Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) remarking, “…Go hire a bunch of teenagers and they’d do it better than we’re doing it. … ISIS has figured it out — they know how to do it. But we don’t seem to do it.”
The new board endeavors to advance DoD in areas such as rapid prototyping, iterative product development, complex data analysis in business decision making, the use of mobile and cloud applications, and organizational information sharing.
The board will be chaired by Alphabet Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt. It will be comprised of up to 12 individuals representing a cross-section of the nation’s innovative industries, drawing on technical and management expertise from Silicon Valley and beyond.
