Justin Fanelli, acting chief technology officer at the Department of the Navy, has released a memorandum on a new approach designed to help DON confront prefixed problems to rapidly optimize capabilities for warfighters and maintain competitive advantage.
The DON Chief Information Officer announced the memo on the department’s Structured Challenges Approach in a LinkedIn post published Thursday.
According to the memo, a structured challenge is an organized event aimed at addressing specific problems and exploring innovative platforms.
The document states that structured challenges, including hackathons, seek to accelerate the adoption of new capabilities, minimize the risk of adopting unsuitable systems and improve the range and quality of capabilities by considering diverse perspectives.
Plan, execute and follow-up are the three steps that should be considered when implementing structured challenges.
The document outlines several best practices to consider when implementing the approach, such as considering world class alignment metrics for evaluating challenge results, maintaining detailed records and documentation in a designated DON CIO location and creating prize challenges where possible.
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