By the time large computer contracts are awarded, systems offered may be a year behind current commercial offerings. Also, prices which may have seemed attractive are not a good deal now. When the systems were put in place many offices had no idea what standards were in place, whether their efforts duplicated another office's efforts, or if the solution had already been developed. To compound the problems described, the present command structure is the result a merger of several separate commands with widely differing information systems structures and systems with only limited compatibility. The contracting process itself is also a barrier.
Large contracts demand lots of lead time, even though requirements change.
Acquisition panels are followed by an endless series of meetings until finally all the paragraphs are in the right order. The engineers and other technical people spend most of their time changing the wording to reflect the current reviewer's comments. This process seems to change every time a new acquisition is initiated. The result is that the technical people get so bogged down with contracting matters, they get farther removed from the technical solution, and maintaining currency with the commercial market. The solution however is not to develop a more complex system, but a relatively simple system.