Government and private sector experts offered different and sometimes conflicting views on how quickly to implement new applications and vendors into fifth-generation (5G) wireless communications supply chains during an August 30 event organized by ATARC and the Federal Mobility Group (FMG) Community of Practice chartered by the Federal Chief Information Officers Council.
Brian Paap, Supply Chain Risk Management Standards Areas Lead (Federal) at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) suggested that the Federal government tends to act too quickly when implementing new technologies.
“Oftentimes the Federal government likes to bring things to market before it’s truly evaluated in terms of need or meeting capabilities, and that’s what I try to stop,” he said.
Paap explained that CISA is working to make sense out of what vendors are able to produce for the marketplace. “We want to lay out the capabilities and standards that a product needs to meet in order to be added to a marketplace,” Paap said.
During the same discussion, Demetrius Davis, Principal Systems Engineer, DoD 5G Cross-Functional Team at MITRE Corporation, took the other side of the argument and respectfully disagreed with Paap.
“I actually disagree with everything he said, not from a principle point of view. When we’re talking about the defense community, we’re trying to speed things up as quickly as possible,” said Davis.
“At the end of the day someone needs a capability, and we don’t want our processes or acquisition or our budgeting systems to get in the way of a warfighter getting a solution that helps win a fight,” said Davis.
