Software Human Capital The

complexity and criticality of defense software poses a significant challenge to the acquisition workforce as well as the human capital experts who need to ensure that the workforce has the right competencies to deliver this essential capability to the warfighter. Add to this the task of identifying cross-functional software competencies that are critical for acquisition professionals, and you have the primary challenges facing the SATEWG. There have been a number of initiatives aimed at improving DoD acquisition outcomes over the years, which have subsequently impacted the acquisition workforce. In the mid-’90s, the DoD adopted a policy encouraging the use of commercial products—rather than those developed to military specifications—in order to take advantage of the innovation available in the commercial marketplace. Commercial standards became preferred over military standards. The government moved toward specifying the expected performance of a system, rather than telling contractors how to build it. In the ’90s era of declining defense budgets, policymakers expected acquisition reform to bring about greater efficiencies in order to pay for defense acquisition. The Federal Acquisition Reform Act (FARA) of 1996 called for greater efficiencies in defense acquisition [1]. The FARA eliminated 15,000 members of the defense acquisition workforce, and called for reductions of 25 percent over the following five years. The focus of the defense acquisition workforce shifted ostensibly from engineering of systems to systems acquisition. The numbers of acquisition personnel dwindled and systems became larger and more complex, creating significant challenges for defense acquisition. These challenges were thrown into the spotlight by Governmen