Defense Digital Service

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product releases, and hacking or rewriting outdated policies or processes to make way for more effective, modern IT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.