This Air Force civilian shows it’s possible to acquire information technology effectively

Few acquisitions seem to vex the government more than information technology. It’s a major expenditure each year, at something like a hundred billion dollars governmentwide. One civilian in the Air Force has demonstrated how to buy IT. He’s Ops-C-2 Acquisition Chief at Hanscom Air Force Base, and one of this year’s Defense Acquisition Workforce Award winners. The Federal Drive with Tom Temin  spoke with Ryan Silvonic.

Interview transcript:

Tom Temin
Tell us, first of all, generally what you do at Hanscom. What kind of IT? What do you buy? And for what purpose?

Ryan Silvonic
I specifically work in Kessel Run, which is a division under the Air Force Lifecycle Management Center, digital directorate. So what we do, we run a program office, essentially, with seven different programs operating under [Department of Defense (DoD)] 5000.87. So Software Acquisition Pathway. And what we do is, we deliver software solutions and capabilities all centered around command and control. So I think one of the most well known programs, within the division or across the Air Force is the air operations center. So think of it kind of as the hub in the brains behind how we fight the air war, within the Air Force and the joint community.

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Tom Temin
So the software that you acquire then is used Air force-wide. It just happens to be located at the Kessel Run operation of Hanscom.

Ryan Silvonic
Correct, yeah, our software that we procure, we actually develop a lot of our software when it comes to the specifics of this effort. But we develop it and deliver it. We had a focus over in the 609th [Air Operations Center (AOC)], which is overseas in Qatar. But now we’re shifting to align to the National Defense Strategy. So the Pacific Affairs region. But we support all over sites across the world. So that’s what we do.

Tom Temin
Well, if there are people that are developing software in the Air Force, how does acquisition come into it?

Ryan Silvonic
That was a creative challenge way back when Kessel Run, before it actually started and became a thing. How do we buy software and deliver software a better way? Because the waterfall process has always been very slow and arduous. And I think there’s been a nice resurgence of innovation in how do we, actually, upskill our warfighter and our acquisition community, to deliver better software on time and when we actually need at the speed of relevancy. So we started out as a small effort, basically, to prove out that we could do something better than what was, if you recall, or if many listeners recall, the AOC 10.2 program. It was a (CAT-1) special interest $700 million and never actually went anywhere and the program was cancelled. So at the time, Sen. McCain (R-Ariz.) had denied our request for additional funding and continuing down that efforts, I go figure something else out. So we had partnered with the IUX, at the time and trying to figure out how do we build software and get it out there a better way. And it’s kind of where Kessel Run was born. Starting working side by side with the user, getting user feedback, quick feedback cycles, getting things out to them as quick as possible, to get validation, rather than, hey, we’re going to come up with a 300 page document that has all these requirements. And then we think we know what we do. And then a year or two years later, it’s actually fielded and maybe, it’s not the right thing, or it’s overcome by events by that time.

Tom Temin
So you’re doing the scrum, the assembly line delivery, short iteration type of DevSecOps, you might say.

Ryan Silvonic
Yeah, it’d be the latter, probably that agile development DevSecOps. That’s what we do at Kessel Run.

Tom Temin
And it’s interesting, because 30 years ago, the Air Force started to divest itself of what they call, blue shirts doing coding. And that lasted for about 20 years. Now, they’re back in the coding business. But there’s also, acquisition of software developed externally through Kessel run. True?

Ryan Silvonic
That is true as well, we definitely kind of run the gamut. So we have seven programs within Kessel Run. Even within the AOC, we have programs that are out there today, the AOC 10.1 baseline. We procure a lot of our software or IT and that is integrated together, but a lot of those things are purchased off the shelf.

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Tom Temin
We’re speaking with Ryan Silvonic. He’s Ops C-2 acquisition chief at Hanscom Air Force Base, in Massachusetts and a Defense Acquisition Workforce award winner. And in all of the seven projects and the buying externally and managing internally, what do you think or you probably know what project land do you this award from the Defense Department?

Ryan Silvonic
Yeah, so I would say, it’s all tied to our delivery of the Kessel Run All Domain Operations Suite. So that’s a mouthful, but we call it KRADOS. It’s basically, the software to replace the heart of what is out there in the AOC today, for C2 command and control. We delivered the minimum viable product or MVP, as well as the minimum viable capability release to the 609. And it actually was operationally adopted and used for day to day ops, for the first time in 20 years. So [Theater Battle Management Core System (TBMCS)] has been out there for two decades. And this was the first tool that’s been adopted to build the air tasking order in the air control order, for the Air Force.

Tom Temin
And did it simply replace logic that had been out there for 20 years? Or were you able to enhance the functionality of C2 itself?

Ryan Silvonic
I think is a little bit of both. We’re trying to aim for parity, because that’s what the users know. But we’re also trying to make improvements as we delivered feel capability.

Tom Temin
And all of this is done in different languages and the old logic and so forth. So it’s probably more complicated than it sounds.

Ryan Silvonic
Yeah. So the old tools are not cloud native. They’re not built for [Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)] or [Platform as a Service (PaaS)], in mind. What KRADOS aims to do is, utilize the the technologies that are available today. And we do that, Kessel Run not just for KRADOS, but we try to leverage what cloud technologies are out there today. And we experienced a lot of efficiency and better productivity, because of that.

Tom Temin
And does any of this add up to the Air Force’s contribution to the eventual [Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2)] effort, which is of course DoD-wide?

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Ryan Silvonic
Yeah, I think there’s definitely direct tie ins from a capability perspective. Everything that we’re doing at the C2 level for the AOC, is going to eventually tie into what we need to do for the joint space. I don’t know if we have a full roadmap yet, but that’s definitely where we’re heading. And we have that in mind, on how we build this capability out. And then we can scale and matured over time, to adopt to whatever the future holds for JADC2.

Tom Temin
And do you come at this from an acquisition background, from a business background, from a coding background? And what do you specifically do? It sounds like a lot of projects that have to be monitored and kept on track?

Ryan Silvonic
Yeah, so I wouldn’t say I know this award was for IT. More so IT management for me. I’m a business background, I’ve been working in acquisition, your traditional acquisition program manager, ever since I actually graduated college. So it’s been a long time working in the acquisition career field. This is the first program, though, that I’ve been where we’re working and figuring out how to do agile software development. So it’s been exciting to say the least.

Tom Temin
And how do you manage the relations between the Air Force people doing work and external parties, contractors doing work? That must be a little bit of cultural and political grounds to kind of harmonize?

Ryan Silvonic
Yeah, every organization has a little bit different culture. But for the most part, I would say what we try to do is, our teams work side by side. So we might have an application team that consists of eight contractors, for military and two civilians. But everyone shows up in, basically, the same uniform, which is t-shirt, jeans, hoodie and they sit down and work on a problem space together. So we try to break those walls down and those silos down which, traditionally, would be you have contractors over here doing their thing and then bringing it together. For the most part in KRADOS, they work side by side and actually are aligned around a common problem.

Tom Temin
And our people just out of curiosity, generally, back in facilities working physically near one another. So they can say, hey, how do I solve this? And what did you do about that?

Ryan Silvonic
Yeah, I think for the most part, we’re still in that hybrid approach, where it’s a lot of remote. We do have a lot of remote hires and stuff like that. So I guess the one good thing with COVID, it open up people’s ideas on allowing remote and virtual workforce. We were kind of set up and primed to do that, because we had people that were located around the country. And then this kind of opened the aperture even more and allowed us to continue to leverage those resources and also target people. It’s hard to get cleared people all in the same location, with that experience or domain space willing to work here. So being remote, it actually opens up the opportunities to get more diversity, better competency, that kind of thing.

Tom Temin
And anything exciting happening in the year ahead?

Ryan Silvonic
Yeah, there’s a lot of excitement, I kind of alluded to it focusing on the Pacific region. But that’s one area, we want to continue to grow and scale the software that we’ve delivered. So that’s going to be a big challenge. So like any challenge, I think there’s a lot of opportunities to excel. So definitely what we’re looking forward to this year.

 

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