Data Rights and Data Wrongs

A few years ago, I had the privilege of serving as the Chief Engineer for an ACAT 1 UAS Program. The previous leadership team had invested considerable effort into securing data rights for the entire aircraft system, and we successfully obtained access to that valuable data. Consequently, we made a strategic decision to introduce a new capability through a competitive integration process, rather than relying on a sole-source contract as we had done in the past. We carefully selected a new vendor who displayed impressive progress.

Unfortunately, the technical burden placed on my office proved to be insurmountable. Despite possessing years of iterative design reviews, technical drawings, software design descriptions, and all source code, we discovered that these elements alone did not provide an absolute source of truth. The original equipment manufacturer (OEM) still retained proprietary software build procedures that were essential for our project. As a result, I reluctantly had to award a support contract to the OEM to incorporate 3rd party code modifications, merge the code, and build and test each new software baseline.

The concept of Modular Open Systems Architecture (MOSA) holds great promise in terms of source of truth data accessibility. However, it is crucial to recognize that the way data is stored, accessed, and sustained ultimately determines true ownership of the system design and the ability to understand the impact of changes. The government program offices must remember that if the they cannot clearly demonstrate or assess the effects of a design alteration, neither can a new vendor entering the picture.