Submit your commercial solutions to solve national security challenges with the help from DIU.

Many government and private organizations struggle with budget planning efforts, namely timely and accurate reporting of program and financial management data. Tracking workflow metrics like incoming funding, contract modifications and real-time status updates allows organizations to better understand their technology adoption status and identify challenges in product scaling. 

Currently, requests for this type of information require manual, time-intensive efforts, where key data points may be missing leading to inaccurate or flawed data. Using data in such a way requires a business intelligence capability platform that can capture these workflow data points from different organizations and across a variety of accounting and tracking systems. 

The Department of Defense (DoD) seeks a solution that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to coordinate budget planning efforts; map incoming funding, contract modifications and real-time execution status updates; and provide a faster and more intelligent way of program management and leadership visibility. The use of LLMs such as retrieval augmented generation (RAG) may also allow for summarization of the overall investments and dashboards that incorporate various system data feeds for full project tracking.

Some of the obstacles to achieving this goal include:

• Limited cross-system validation of total project funding obligated on contracts, expenditures through milestone completion and vendor invoicing.
• Accurate and timely management of project development, transition status and impact. 
• Manual reporting for reviews that have a lag of several months. 
• The inability to input project status information (such as via email and document uploads) into systems that are not shared across user groups.
• Manual aggregation of technical areas of interest and investment status; and 
• Inability to trend investment and status to allow for real-time adjustments or funding increase where critical technology may be lagging vis-a-vis national security missions.

Desired Solution Attributes:

Solution Briefs will be considered relevant if they address the following characteristics:

• Solution’s ability to ingest various structured and unstructured data formats such as JSON, HTML, CSV, XML, EXCEL and PDF/flat files through APIs as well as uploads of the aforementioned file formats.
• Ability to design and deploy the Program Manager’s workflow as well as DIU’s Acquisition and Finance stakeholders in an automated process that is supported by a collaborative workspace in which project information can be shared and saved.
  • System integration plan and user feedback for product/deployment execution
    • Business system analysts are highly encouraged to ensure the overall solution is mapped and deployed successfully
• Intuitive, user-friendly look and feel
• Vendors must have pre-existing capabilities at the IL4 level and be FedRAMP Moderate certified. However, it is expected that an offeror is capable of achieving IL 5 level and FedRAMP High certified. 

A fully functional prototype should produce the following outputs:

• Easily ingest and/or integrate with pre-existing enterprise datasets such as integration with existing CRM, financial and procurement/contracting systems of record. 
•  Populate program updates in near real time based upon milestones and actions from integrated software systems confirm project auto-update recommendations (e.g. new funding arrival, expiring funding deadlines, contract modifications, vendor invoice/payment and milestone completion) and summarizations of program status  
• Configured productivity tools to support seamless collaborations across various enterprise personas and access levels, including but not limited to program managers, business analysts, organizational leadership, acquisition professionals, commercial engagement professionals, and external stakeholders.
• Aggregate and visualize program maturity and resource allocation across technology areas and portfolios in an intuitive, persona based and easily manipulated manner. 
• Manage data, security, backup and recovery plans that address the IL4/5 sensitivity of the data incorporated. 

Preference will be given to proposals that demonstrate product maturity and deployment validation (i.e., products that readily fit or can be adapted for the solicited purpose with the least amount of non-recurrent-engineering effort). Additionally, partial solutions that uniquely address specific requirements are welcome and will be considered for this solicitation. Vendors offering modular approaches are encouraged to submit their proposals.

Solution providers should expect to participate in a shared development space with other vendors and government developers to rapidly deploy, monitor and iterate upon solutions. Solution providers may be asked to collaborate and/or participate in cross functional efforts and/or in a teaming arrangement. The government intends to identify one or more integrators as a solution provider but vendors are also welcome to team with integrators prior to submission.