Army will tap its 'digital natives' for apps
By
Bob Brewin
Contest under way to award $30,000 in prize money for software programs that will fundamentally change the way the Army operates.
The Army kicked off its Apps for the Army competition this week to tap undiscovered abilities of, what the Army's chief information officer called, the "digital natives" who now are serving.
The digital natives are troops who have the innate ability to create software applications on their own outside the traditional -- and often cumbersome -- software development process, Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Sorenson, the service's CIO, told reporters during a briefing on Wednesday. He said he views the Apps for the Army competition as the first step in a process to tap into that capability on a long-term basis.
Sorenson hopes the result will be a software development environment that can deliver applications in a matter of weeks, not months or years, as is the case now. Soldiers and commanders could then download the apps as easily as a song clip from the Apple iTunes store.
The Army will use the Defense Information System Agency's on-demand computing environment for software developers, called the Rapid Access Computing Environment, to support the contestants. The competition also will provide software tools from DISA's Forge.mil site for developers to write their applications.
RACE will allow competitors to build applications in a number of open source software environments, including Apache, BlackBerry, iPhone and Android mobile software.
Sixteen individuals have signed up so far for the competition, which is limited to 100 entrants. The contest will run through May 15.
The Army modeled its competition after the Apps for Democracy contest sponsored by the District of Columbia in 2008. Federal CIO Vivek Kundra served as the District's chief technology officer at the time.
The District awarded $53,000 in prizes and in return received applications worth $3 million to $4 million. The Army plans to award $30,000 in prize money.
Sorenson said he is convinced that open source application development will pay similar dividends for the Army and will fundamentally "change the way the Army functions."