Data & Analysis Center for Software


The Data & Analysis Center for Software was one of several United States Department of Defense sponsored Information Analysis Centers, administered by the Defense Technical Information Center. It was managed by the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory and operated by Quanterion Solutions Inc. under a long term DoD contract. The website is no longer available and was replaced by https://www.csiac.org/.
DACS is chartered to collect, analyze, and disseminate information relating to the software domain to the DoD Software Engineering community, which includes Defense contractors and the academic community as well. DACS serves as an information broker, identifying resources that exist within the global community and making those resources available to the community through outreach venues such as an information rich web site, technical reports, technical journals and a variety of services offered free of charge.
Additionally, DACS, like all DTIC managed IACs, is a contract vehicle that serves the DoD by expediting the process for DoD components to acquire the services of commercial and academic providers to accomplish technical area tasks.

DACS Mission, Charter and History

DACS Mission and Charter

The mission of DACS, like the other IACs in the DTIC IAC Program, is:
DACS receives its authority to operate from the following DoD Directives and Instructions, which constitute the IAC Charter.

History

How long has DACS existed?

The DACS was established in the late 1970s. The software community, at that time, recognized the need for data and information about computer software, its development process and the software technology area in general. The rapid expansion of software engineering technology and the proliferation of tools and techniques made it difficult for an individual or organization to remain cognizant of the current status of the software engineering field. This situation resulted in the duplication of efforts in software research and seriously hampered the transfer of technology from the software research environment to the user sector of the software community.
Recognizing the need for an information analysis center to serve the government, industrial, and university community as a focal point for software development and experience data, in August 1978 the Rome Air Development Center, which is now called the Air Force Research Laboratory, contracted with IIT Research Institute to design such a center, named, The Data and Analysis Center for Software, that would acquire, analyze, synthesize, and disseminate information on software engineering technology.
The decision was based in part on the fact that the DoD and other Federal Agencies found that the establishment of special purpose information analysis centers and technology transfer programs were effective in overcoming problems in technology implementation and diffusion of mission-oriented developments. NASA was cited as an example for demonstrating a benefit-to-cost ratio in excess of ten to one for its Technology Utilization Program. At that time the DoD had already been successful in operating Information Analysis Centers for Metals, Ceramics, Hardware Reliability, and Machineability data.

What was the original purpose of the DACS?

DACS initially functioned as the DoD librarian for software related topics. The objectives were to:
Since its inception, DACS has been operated by various Defense contractors over the years and the library, and other resources constituting the DACS collection, have migrated to each contractor in turn. The objectives are essentially the same but the terminology used to define them has evolved as the software environment has changed. The means for improving the 'transfer of software engineering technology' now centers around use of web technology to deliver information to the mass community in electronic format, organized in ways that make it easy for the community to acquire and use the information.

Why The DACS Is Notable

DTIC and the DTIC IAC program are notable. The DACS is an IAC. Some DACS products are gaining recognition.
Some DACS reports have been published in peer-reviewed journals and collections. Some DACS work is referenced in the professional literature. For example, Warren Harrison et al. and Raffo et al. cite both Vienneau and Thomas McGibbon, the DACS Program Manager. Rini van Solingen cites McGibbon. David F. Rico acknowledges Thomas McGibbon for "inspirational" work that has "been critical to the formation of concepts in this book". Hossam A. Gabbar and Almstrum et al. cite Vienneau. Michael R. Lyu cites a DACS implementation of the Goel-Okumoto software reliability model, distributed by the DACS at the time.
Additional evidence of the effectiveness and outreach of DACS products and services is contained in a DTIC Success Story which describes the significance of a DACS core effort in providing value-added analysis in its synopsis and overview of a General Accounting Office report, resulting in the subsequent use of that material by members of the defense community and software industry, as well as extending the usefulness and outreach of the original GAO report in both time and scope beyond two years. The DACS article providing the synopsis of the GAO report was published in the July 2005 issue of the DACS Software Tech News

DACS Products and Services

In fulfillment of its charter, DACS engages in a continuous cycle of data and information collection, analysis, and dissemination. DACS adds value for the community by the manner in which it organizes and disseminates or otherwise packages information to make it accessible to the broadest spectrum of community members. Thus collection and dissemination are tightly integrated. DACS maintains an information rich web site, produces a quarterly technical journal, and periodically, develops State-Of-The-Art Reports on various software engineering topics in addition to focused research such as the ROI initiative and the Gold Practice initiative. The paragraphs below provide details about specific products and services.

DACS Web Site

The primary means of dissemination is via the DACS web site. There, DACS presents information organized around the key software related research areas or topics. Each research area is further organized into content-specific subtopics and information categories. Visitors to a topic area can navigate among the categories to get the type of information desired. Information categories include literature, best practices, case studies and lessons learned, education and training resources, subject matter experts, glossaries and acronyms, blogs and other interactive venues for software topics, programs and organizations, service providers and consultants, tools, and other related resources. Subtopics provide greater coverage of the main topic as well as addressing a specific perspective, enabling the visitor to quickly navigate to the desired level of detail.
Some of the research topics included on the web site are: Software Acquisition, Software Architecture, Agile Software Development, Software Best Practices, Collaborative Software Engineering, Configuration Management,
From the web site registered DACS users can search DACS databases, including:
DACS publishes a quarterly technical journal, called The Software Tech News, which is distributed in printed and electronic format to registered DACS subscribers free of charge and also available for viewing and download from the DACS web site. Authors are solicited for their expertise or experience relative to a chosen theme. Recent themes have included:
DACS periodically produces technical reports on a variety of software engineering topics. In keeping with the DACS mission, most reports are made available to the software engineering community as free PDF downloads from the DACS web site. These documents are reporting on current research in the subject and are typically authored by subject matter experts. Some recent reports include:
The software domain is not an isolated entity. There are many instances of overlap of software related subject matter with the domains of other IACs such as reliability, information assurance and modeling and simulation. For example, software reliability is a subtopic of the broader topic of system reliability. Software assurance is intertwined with the subject of Information Assurance. Software technology is a significant part of modeling and simulation.
Because of this natural overlap, DACS has collaborated with other IACs to jointly produce the following documents:
As part of its outreach to address the needs of the software community, DACS provides a technical inquiry service, wherein it provides up to four hours of research, free of charge, to address any technical inquiry from any member of the DACS community. In some cases, DACS connects the inquirer directly with a Subject Matter Expert to satisfy the request. DTIC, the organization that funds the DACS, regards the number of technical inquiries handled by DACS each month as a key performance metric for operation of the IAC. The scope of questions asked is very broad, ranging from simple questions asking for a definition of an acronym, to very complex questions. The following list contains some recent requests that convey the essence and scope of this service.
As is the case with all DTIC managed IACs, DACS serves as a contract vehicle that enables DoD components to acquire technical services from commercial providers and academic institutions without having to engage in a formal competitive bid process. This saves time and resources for the government and enables awarding of a contract within a four to six week window. This IAC technical area task service has the following characteristics which are beneficial to the government:
The efficiency of the TAT contracting process and its bypassing of a formal RFP process is premised on the business model of the DTIC IAC program. Specifically, contractors must compete for the opportunity to operate an IAC. This is a full open competition, and award is based on the capability of the contractor to perform software-aligned technical areas tasks, as well as to perform the core functions of maintaining software-focused libraries and developing a software center of excellence. When bidding on an IAC, contractors form collaborative teams to ensure the best overall coverage of the domain. Therefore, the contractor operating the DACS has already competed for the right for their team to perform TATs. The DACS contractor manages all TATs, insuring that any scientific and technical information resulting from the TAT is added to the DACS collection for dissemination in appropriate venues. When the government wishes to acquire the services of someone other than the DACS contractor, it is done as a TAT based on a subcontracting arrangement between the service provider and the DACS contractor. This business model gives the government a great deal of flexibility in working with DACS to acquire the services from the most qualified organizations. This is especially true in scenarios where the technical expertise needed resides within a small group in an academic institution, or a small business.
TATs cover a broad spectrum of activities within the software domain. The list below is included to communicate the range and types of activities performed under TATs.
As the software domain evolves and software technology surges, developers face significant challenges in meeting the requirements of these large complex systems of systems. DACS currently is engaged in some initiatives to provide the developers greater insight about software best practice and about improving their development process. Concurrently DACS is participating, along with the other IACs, in supporting a DTIC initiative to make more scientific and technical information available to the warfighter in electronic form. These initiatives are described in greater detail in the following sub-sections.

DACS Gold Practice Initiative

This initiative, started in 2003, is focused on providing the software acquisition and software engineering communities with detailed information about prevalent software acquisition and development best practices that may have a positive impact on program risks and ROI. DACS is conducting extensive research on each identified practice and then publishing a technical document for each practice, that contains a detailed description of the practice or practice set, including the interrelationships among practices and an extensive lists of resources relating to that practice. The documents are available for viewing and download, free of charge, from the . The document also identifies relevant web sites, tools and methods, experts, training opportunities, literature, terms, practice origins and recommending origins.
The initial set of practices which DACS has targeted for this initiative were first identified in the PhD dissertation of Dr. Richard Turner titled “Implementation of Best Practices in U.S. Department of Defense Software-Intensive System Acquisitions”.
The following practices can be downloaded from the :
This initiative has been ongoing since the late 1990s. Software Process Improvement has received much attention in recent years; however, it has been very difficult to translate benefits achieved in one organization to another organization. This initiative is focused on accumulating data from SPI efforts, analyzing it, generalizing and modeling the cost benefits one can achieve from SPI efforts. In 1999 DACS produced a State of the Art Report titled "A Business Case for Software Process Improvement" and revised this report in 2007 to provide new insights into the details necessary to demonstrate from a business perspective the benefits of improved software management using SPI techniques. This revised SOAR examines the business implications of some more recent SPI practices, including the Capability Maturity Model for Integration, agile development, and systems engineering.
The DACS has recently implemented a new capability called the "ROI Dashboard©", on the DACS web site to provide updated information about return-on-investment results. The ROI Dashboard© also contains updated information for practices such as inspections, reuse, and secondary benefits. It establishes a framework whereby the current methods of performing software development can be compared to any proposed improvements, graphically displaying open and publicly available data and providing standard statistical analysis of the data.

Total Electronic Migration System (TEMS)

The Total Electronic Migration System is a project funded by DTIC to support the collection of scientific and technical information held in the IAC document collections and the subsequent dissemination of that information to a restricted DoD community through a sophisticated search capability. DACS, along with the other DTIC managed Information Analysis Centers, is collaborating with the TEMS initiative, by transforming to electronic format the documents within the DACS collection that exist currently only in printed format and uploading them to the database created by DTIC to support the TEMS effort. In many cases, the IACs are the single holders of valuable documents developed prior to 2000. This initiative preserves them and expands their outreach. Each IAC is transforming many thousands of documents to PDF format, making them more accessible to the IAC researchers as well as the TEMS. This initiative is ongoing although many IACs are still working on scanning the backlog of documents that existed in printed form only. For further details visit the and review the 'About TEMS' section.