The Defense Digital Service (DDS) was established in 2015 to apply industry best practices to DoD's most complex IT challenges. DDS functions like a tech SWAT team, comprised of developers, engineers, and problem solvers on 1-2 year tours. DDS focuses on high-impact projects like reforming systems for veterans' healthcare access, launching bug bounty programs, and modernizing platforms like GPS and the military enlistment process. Recent projects include developing drone detection technologies, redesigning training for cyber soldiers, and overhauling antiquated systems like those used for military family moves.
The Defense Digital Service (DDS) was established in 2015 to apply industry best practices to DoD's most complex IT challenges. DDS functions like a tech SWAT team, comprised of developers, engineers, and problem solvers on 1-2 year tours. DDS focuses on high-impact projects like reforming systems for veterans' healthcare access, launching bug bounty programs, and modernizing platforms like GPS and the military enlistment process. Recent projects include developing drone detection technologies, redesigning training for cyber soldiers, and overhauling antiquated systems like those used for military family moves.
The Defense Digital Service (DDS) was established in 2015 to apply industry best practices to DoD's most complex IT challenges. DDS functions like a tech SWAT team, comprised of developers, engineers, and problem solvers on 1-2 year tours. DDS focuses on high-impact projects like reforming systems for veterans' healthcare access, launching bug bounty programs, and modernizing platforms like GPS and the military enlistment process. Recent projects include developing drone detection technologies, redesigning training for cyber soldiers, and overhauling antiquated systems like those used for military family moves.
The Defense Digital Service (DDS) was established in 2015 to apply industry best practices to DoD's most complex IT challenges. DDS functions like a tech SWAT team, comprised of developers, engineers, and problem solvers on 1-2 year tours. DDS focuses on high-impact projects like reforming systems for veterans' healthcare access, launching bug bounty programs, and modernizing platforms like GPS and the military enlistment process. Recent projects include developing drone detection technologies, redesigning training for cyber soldiers, and overhauling antiquated systems like those used for military family moves.
The Defense Digital Service (DDS) was established in November 2015 to transform technology within the Department of Defense (DoD) by applying industry best practices to high-impact national security missions and some of DoD’s most complex IT challenges. DDS is an agency team of the U.S. Digital Service.
Our Team DDS functions like a SWAT Team of tech experts on one-to-two-year tours of duty as government employees. The team is comprised of world-class software developers, engineers, designers, product managers, and expert problem solvers. Team members’ roles can include developing new code, managing technical projects, advising on development processes and product releases, and hacking or rewriting outdated policies or processes to make way for more effective, modern IT approaches.
Our Projects DDS focuses on projects that advance DoD's most important initiatives that are critical to the well-being of Service members, civilians, and core operations of the Department. Projects include reforming digital services that provide military families access to critical benefits, running bug bounty programs to identify vulnerabilities and better secure defense systems; developing drone detection technologies; hunting adversaries on defense networks; and rethinking training for cyber soldiers.
Project Highlights
Service Treatment Records: Getting Veterans Access to the Treatment They Deserve A flawed software system caused roughly 5 percent of healthcare requests by retired veterans to be incorrectly denied, leaving tens of thousands of veterans unable to access their critical promised benefits. A team of four engineers stepped in to address a variety of technical issues that allowed healthcare records to slip through the cracks between the DoD and the Department of Veterans Affairs. The team of engineers went to work and correctly processed 20,000 documents that had been lost prior to DDS involvement, reduced the time to transfer records from three months to one day, shifted system updates from every 18 months to every two weeks, and helped ensure the veterans could get access to the treatment they deserved.
Hack the Pentagon: Bug Bounties to Better Secure Defense Systems
The DoD spends billions of dollars every year on information security, but had not sought to find security vulnerabilities through bug bounties, a security approach that has gained significant traction in the private sector. In 2016, DDS launched Hack the Pentagon, the first federal bug bounty program, which has led to more than 5,000 valid vulnerabilities reported in government systems. In the past two years, the Army, Air Force, Marine Corps, and other DoD agencies have partnered with DDS to utilize bug bounties as a way to harness technical talent across the globe to better secure DoD assets. As part of the program, the DoD established the government’s first Vulnerability Disclosure Policy, which created a safe, secure, and legal avenue for private citizens to report vulnerabilities found on public facing DoD websites and applications. It also serves as a bridge between the DoD and security researcher community to work openly and in good faith together to identify and disclose vulnerabilities. Army Cyber Pilot Program: Supporting Critical Missions DDS launched a pilot program to help engage and support technical talent within the U.S. Army Cyber Command (ARCYBER). Through a series of collaborative pilot projects, highly-trained Army officers and soldiers work side-by-side with DDS civilians in unclassified, collaborative, startup-like spaces to tackle real-world problems using technology and tools found in the private sector. Examples of projects include developing drone detection technologies for critical missions, hunting adversaries on DoD networks, and redesigning training for cyber soldiers.
Modernizing GPS: Next Generation Operational Control System (OCX)
The DoD’s GPS modernization program is an ongoing effort to upgrade the performance of the Global Positioning System used by civilian and military stakeholders across the globe. DDS has worked alongside the Air Force to support the modernization of the Next Generation Operational Control System (OCX), the system that operates GPS. DDS engineers introduced private sector software engineering best practices that have significantly reduced schedule slip and cost risk of the multi-year, multi-billion dollar undertaking. DDS delivered a DevOps pipeline that transformed the software development process for the entire initiative, improving time to change validation by over 95%. DDS also accelerated delivery by using a private sector vendor to alleviate hardware constraints by leveraging commercial cloud -- the first time a National Security System used commercial cloud for rapid development. Other technical fixes include automating the deployment of certain software components, lowering the amount of time to validate code change from roughly one month one hour.
Helping Military Families Move: Defense Personal Property System (Move.mil)
Approximately 450,000 military families move each year to a new duty station. The relocation process impacts 25 percent of military families every year and is one of the most stressful experiences short of actually serving in combat. The Defense Personal Property System (DPS) is an antiquated system used by all military families for the moving process. In 2017, the DDS team was called in when DPS crashed and deployed a rapid response team to rescue the site. After the DDS response, DPS users reported significantly reduced latency rates, more users supported than ever before, and successful shipment requests and scheduling increased from 16 percent to more than 99 percent. DDS continues to work with the U.S. Transportation Command to overhaul the DPS system, so it can be on par with private-sector sites in terms of user experience and performance, including a mobile friendly version that provides key information to customers throughout each phase of their move.
Modernizing the Military Enlistment Process: MIRS
The Military Entrance Processing Command (MEPCOM) Integrated Resource System (MIRS) is the software, systems, processes and technical infrastructure that support the military’s recruiting and entrance processing mission. The flawed, mainly paper-based system pre-dates the internet, but is relied on to send and store sensitive data on every individual that is inducted into the United States military. DDS setup an electronic records transfer between the MEPCOM systems and the Army, Navy, and Air Force human resources systems. This freed recruits from having to carry frequently lost paperwork from the entrance station to boot camp --- as well as keeping staff from spending thousands of hours having to re-enter the data by hand. Since launch in late 2017, this system has saved over 1.5 million pages of paper from being carried back and forth. DDS continues to work with the Army to overhaul components and accelerate modernization efforts across the system to improve security, functionality, and usability.
Advisor Network (ANET)
Hundreds of NATO military and civilian advisors are deployed to Afghanistan each year for the Train, Advise, Assist mission of Operation Resolute Support. This mission relies on a software system called the Advisor Network (ANET), to track and understand advisor engagements with their Afghan government counterparts. The system had gaps in connectivity, decreasing usage of the system, poor performance, and flawed software development practices. In 2017, DDS spent 15 weeks working with NATO leadership and a team at the Pentagon to rebuild ANET using modern software development standards to bring higher performance, faster speed, better usability, and enhanced capabilities in support of RS mission goals within 5 months. A small DDS team was on the ground in Afghanistan at various stages of the project conducting user research and ultimately rolling out the software mission-wide. ANET 2.0 was fully deployed and has been handed over to a team at NATO for ongoing development and maintenance. The unclassified ANET source code was also released on Code.mil, the DoD’s first free and open source platform launched by DDS in February 2017.
