Research for Information Technology

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Data Rights Valuation in Software Acquisitions
September 30, 2012
The right of the federal government to reuse, modify, reproduce, perform, display, release, and disclose data - particularly computer software - has become an important topic in contract negotiations. We describe the valuation methods used by DOD and industry to estimate software development costs and to assign value to data rights licenses that are broader than the default license described in DFARS. We find that the benefit to DOD arises from the impact of such licenses on future competition and costs. Two things must occur for expanded licenses to be worth the additional cost to DOD: the additional information covered by the license must be transferrable to alternative suppliers, either competing commercial companies or organic DOD facilities. Second, the information covered by the license must be useful to alternative suppliers, to the extent that it actually lowers their production costs.
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Is NAVSO Organized and Staffed to Do Its Job?
January 1, 2002
The Commander, U.S. Naval Forces Southern Command (COMUSNAVSO), asked CNA for help. This new command, the Navy component command to U.S. Southern Command (USSOUTHCOM), established in February 2000, had a staff cobbled together from various existing commands, which it in part replace, and no official manning review was involved in its inception. The focus of our study was on this question: Is NAVSO organized and staffed to do its job? To answer this question we had to understand NAVSO's job, organization (with a focus on its relationships in the administrative/Navy chain of control), and staff. As background to these efforts, we needed to look at the history of Navy component commands in the SOUTHCOM AOR. This work produced insights into the genesis of NAVSO and the form it took.
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Evaluation of the Virtual Naval Hospital
December 1, 2000
The Virtual Naval Hospital (VNH) is a digital medical library administered over the Internet by the Electronic Differential Multimedia Laboratory, University of Iowa College of Medicine in collaboration with the U.S. Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery (BUMED). A CD-ROM version of the VNH is also distributed to Navy health care providers. Its purpose is to deliver authoritative medical information to point-of-care medical providers to help take better care of patients. Evaluations of the VNH to date have focused on information needs of medical providers and readership of the World Wide Web (WWW) site. No analysis of VNH utilization patterns, derived benefits, or media preferences has been done. The goal of this evaluation is to provide an analysis of the VNH that can be used to document lessons learned, and planning for future services that might be offered.
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Creating a 'Revolution in Business Affairs' in DOD
December 1, 1997
Given the lack of an immediate threat by a superpower, the pressures to fund nondefense programs, and the desire to shrink the deficit, the military's budget, in real terms, is unlikely to increase. Yet, we must fund modernization efforts and new initiatives, such as 'the Revolution in Military Affairs.' The only source for these funds appears to be the current military infrastructure accounts. Therefore, this paper calls for a 'Revolution in Business Affairs' (RBA) to provide an efficient and flexible infrastructure that supports changing military requirements at a price that does not overwhelm modernization efforts. The RBA will achieve this by changing fundamental DoD business process to those that have worked in the private sector.
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