A repository created by the Navy for sharing and reusing software and hardware to promote innovation and save money has been expanded across the Defense Department, making it more accessible and easier to use, according to an official at the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA).
The Navy launched the Software, Hardware Asset Reuse Enterprise (SHARE) initiative five years ago with the idea of allowing companies to access open source software and innovate on existing coding while avoiding the need to write new software and integrate new technology into the fleet. SHARE is part of the Navy’s–and now DoD’s–efforts to move toward more open architecture systems.
On March 30, SHARE was transitioned from Naval Systems Engineering Resource Center to DISA’s forge.mil and is now known as Forge SHARE. It will now reach a broader user base for finding solutions to the Pentagon’s program requirements.
“The move to Forge.mil allowed the Navy to increase its scope beyond Navy audiences to include the entire DoD community,” Dan Gahafer, the Forge.mil program manager, said. “Further, Forge SHARE alleviates concerns of product owners around intellectual property by removing the requirement that item artifacts be stored within the SHARE repository.”
Nick Guertin, the Navy’s director for transformation who collaborated in the transition to DISA, said the Navy was able to take advantage of lessons learned with SHARE, particularly with regard to data rights, and shifted that knowledge to forge.mil.
“We’ve taken the lessons the Navy learned out of operating the SHARE repository and we are bringing those things forward in DISA Forge SHARE,” he said.
“Visionaries for changing defense acquisition that started the Navy down the SHARE effort … forced us to think about how we improve defense acquisition and helped us elevate our understanding of how to implement open architecture systems,” he added.
Open Architecture embraces the use of existing, commercially available technology to produce modular, interoperable systems with open design practices that can be easily upgraded and thereby reduce costs. The goal is reduce numbers of legacy systems that are expensive to maintain and upgrade.
SHARE in the past has struggled to garner enough attention and coding deposits as the Navy has tried to work through the complications of the initiative. One issue has been a reluctance by companies to share their technology, fearing another firm could further develop it and leave the originator decoupled from its product.