From the U.S. Government Accountability Office, www.gao.gov Transcript for: Weapon System Software Sustainment Description: What happens when the software in DOD's weapons systems needs to be updated or maintained? Hear about it in this podcast. Related GAO Work: GAO-19-173: Weapon System Sustainment: DOD Needs to Better Capture and Report Software Sustainment Costs Released: February 2019 [ Background Music ] [ Diana Maurer: ] Without software sustainment, you don't have a modern military force which means getting software sustainment right is vitally important. [ Matt Oldham: ] Welcome to GAO's Watchdog Report, your source for news and information from the U.S. Government Accountability Office. I'm Matt Oldham. Think about the last time your phone, computer, or tablet prompted you for a software upgrade. If you're like me, it can feel like a perpetual chore. Whether it's security updates, patches, or bug fixes, this maintenance is necessary to keeping our machines running safe and smooth. I'm with Diana Maurer, a Defense Capabilities and Management director at GAO. And she's here to talk about a report on software sustainability not for our PCs but for devices with a little more lethality, DOD's major weapon systems. Diana, is that a fair comparison? Does software associated with DOD weaponry need maintenance like we might be used to? [ Diana Maurer: ] Yes and more. Software is, in fact, the lifeblood of our major weapon systems. Planes, ships, tanks, helicopters, missiles, they all literally operate and function based on their software. They use software to navigate, to communicate, to collect and share information, acquire and target the enemy, even identify and diagnose maintenance problems. And then maintaining or sustaining the software, DOD uses those terms to mean the same thing, is necessary to keep weapon systems operating and functioning properly. So just like your phone or your computer, DOD needs to identify and fix bugs, upgrade software to the next version, improve the ability of one software to talk to another as well as prevent and protect against future problems. [ Matt Oldham: ] So I've got a pretty good idea of what could happen if I don't upgrade my phone when it prompts me to. What could happen if updates aren't addressed with some of this military software we're talking about? [ Diana Maurer: ] Put simply, many weapon systems can't operate if the software fails to function as required. And they have to address a number of risks at DOD. First and foremost, most people think about our cyber risks, right? And it's a significant problem that DOD is working on all the time to try to mitigate. But there are other risks if software doesn't work as planned. There are risks to the safety of the operators of these systems. There are risks to the overall performance, right? Because the software is not working properly, the systems aren't performing the way they're designed to perform. And that is value for money implications for the taxpayers. We, as taxpayers, have spent hundreds of billions of dollars to buy, build, and maintain these systems so it's important that the software works correctly. [ Matt Oldham: ] Now is the Department of Defense solely responsible for this task, or does some of it fall to the individual branches of the military? [ Diana Maurer: ] Well, it turns out there are actually three groups that have a shared responsibility for software sustainment. First is the Department of Defense at the department level and generally speaking that means offices at the Pentagon who set and enforce policy and guidance for the entire military. A second major group are the individual services: Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines. And they're responsible for managing and carrying out software sustainment, but it's important to keep in mind that the Defense Department doesn't build weapon systems. DOD gives money to contractors. And it's the contractors that build these systems. So it shouldn't come as a surprise that they're the third major player in software sustainment. And since the contractors are so involved in developing and maintaining these systems, the technical data rights associated with the software, the manuals associated with the software, that's all developed and built and created by the contractors themselves. So that's an issue, right, that the proper balance between how much of that information is DOD going to purchase for its own uses? [ Matt Oldham: ] So you're talking about the contractors and you're talking about data rights. Does the Department of Defense own this information outright, or do they have access to this data? [ Diana Maurer: ] Well, it varies depending on the weapon system but in practice, as DOD is paying the contractor to build a system, they're also paying the contractor to get access to some, but not all, of that original source code, manuals and so forth. DOD is trying to balance between costs as well as what they're going to need, in some cases, decades down the road. [ Background Music ] [ Matt Oldham: ] So it sounds like while DOD is responsible for managing the sustainment of weapon systems software, they're looking for the right balance between budgeting and future-proofing. So Diana, what did your team recommend? [ Diana Maurer: ] So we had a number of recommendations generally structured around the issues of costs as well as DOD's efforts to address these issues with intellectual property and data rights. So on the cost front, we found that the Department is starting to collect information on the cost of software sustainment from contractors and that's great, but they're not doing that from its own software centers. We think they should do so. We also found that there are also gaps in what the different military services are reporting to DOD on software sustainment. We feel that the Department should take efforts to fill those gaps. On the intellectual property front, Congress required DOD to develop a plan with milestones to create a cadre of intellectual property experts. DOD hasn't done so yet. We think that they should. [ Matt Oldham: ] Well, lastly, what do you believe is the bottom line of this report? [ Diana Maurer: ] Well, basically without software sustainment, you don't have a modern military force which means getting software sustainment right is vitally important. Now the good news is we found that DOD has a policy framework in place to help position the Department to good outcomes with software sustainment. And we think that taking these actions will better position DOD to sustain weapon systems software. We all benefit from that because we'd have enhanced national security as well as better value for our taxpayer dollars used to pay DOD. [ Matt Oldham: ] Diana Maurer is a Defense Capabilities and Management director at GAO, and she was talking about her report on the Department of Defense's weapon system software maintenance efforts. Thank you for your time, Diana. [ Diana Maurer: ] Thank you very much. [ Background Music ] [ Matt Oldham: ] And thank you for listening to the Watchdog Report. To hear more podcasts, subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts. [ Background Music ] [ Matt Oldham: ] For more from the congressional watchdog, the U.S. Government Accountability Office, visit us as gao.gov.