SD-2 Dod Acquisitions Buying Commercial Items And Nondevelopmental ItemsThis document offers guidance on acquisitions involving all types of commercial and nondevelopmental items: systems, subsystems, assemblies, parts, and items of supply. Commercial services are also addressed.This document does not present a “cookbook” approach to the acquisition of commercial and nondevelopmental items; such an approach could not accommodate the vast array of potential applications. It does offer lessons learned and things to consider when participating on an integrated product team.

Pages 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10 - 11 - 12 - 13 - 14 - 15 - 16 - 17 - 18 - 19 - 20 - 21 - 22 - 23 - 24 - 25 - 26 - 27 - 28 - 29 - 30 - 31 - 32 - 33 - 34 - 35 - 36 - 37 - 38 - 39 - 40 - 41 - 42 - 43 - 44 - 45 - 46 - 47 - 48 - 49 - 50 - 51 - 52 - 53 - 54 - 55 - 56 - 57 - 58 - 59 - 60 - 61 - 62 - 63 - 64

I                                                ,                                   -                            J'

·�

•  Is the commercial item tied to overseas companies, materials, or countries that might result in availability issues during international economic, political, or natural crises?

Answers to these questions rarely pose disruption to the commercial acquisition; rather, they indicate areas in which additional thinking and planning for contingencies must occur.

In addition to the availability of suitable commercial or nondevelopmental items to meet operational requirements, the system architecture can affect the degree to which commercial and nondevelopmental items can be used. Maximum use of commercial items and NDIs in a system requires an architecture based on open standards, specifically, the standards found in the DoD Information Technology Standards Registry.Those standards are to be used by DoD for all new systems because they facilitate interoperability and integration of systems within the Global Information Grid.An open system may be characterized by the following:

•  Well-defined, widely used, nonproprietary interfaces or protocols

•  Standards that are developed and adopted by recognized standards bodies

•  Explicit provision for expansion or upgrades through the incorporation of additional or higher performance elements with minimal impact on the system

•  Definition of all aspects of system interfaces to facilitate new or additional system capabili- ties for a wide range of applications.

In other words, an open system implements sufficient open specifications for interfaces, serv- ices, and supporting formats to enable properly engineered components to be used across a wide range of systems with minimal changes; to operate with other components on local and remote systems; and to interact with users in a system that facilitates the transfer of a system, a component, data, or a user from one hardware or software environment to another.

Balancing the various factors affecting the use of commercial items or NDIs will likely re- quire additional tradeoff analyses. All potential alternatives and solutions should be considered. Acquisitions frequently require tradeoffs between performance and cost and between one per- formance parameter and another.Tradeoffs are appropriate when they optimize satisfaction of user requirements such as performance, affordability, and availability. In short, tradeoff analysis is an important tool in acquiring an item that presents the overall best value. In some cases, im- mediate or accelerated availability, coupled with reduced risk and avoidance of development costs, may be much more important to the user than a marginal change in performance.

After considering the results of tactical market research and tradeoff analysis, the IPT should be able to determine if the needed commercial or nondevelopmental item can be used as is. If it cannot, then the IPT needs to determine whether the requirement can be modified, or whether the item can be modified.