The CIA is changing the way it buys technology in hopes to stay on top of the constantly evolving technology landscape.
Reuters is reporting that in a meeting with software vendors on Tuesday, the CIA’s top tech officer, Ira Hunt, told vendors that the agency was changing the way they do business. The way the CIA had done business before was that they would buy all of a vendor’s product through enterprise licensing agreements.
The new way of doing business will see the agency paying for what services they need based on what is required at the time. This will reportedly allow the CIA to take advantage of “emerging capabilities early on.”
Another reason for the change is simple money saving practices. It’s no secret that the U.S. government is slashing spending across the board and the CIA needs to find ways to cut spending just like every other government agency.
The CIA uses software from companies like Oracle Corp, SAP AG and HP that help them look through data for potential threats or other information that may be beneficial to the administration.
When Hunt presented the CIA’s new stance to vendors, he assured them that the agency wasn’t trying to screw over any of the companies. He even offered to let the companies involved take a peek at their operations to make sure they weren’t being swindled.
At the same conference, it was said that current tools can’t keep up with the amount of data being collected by drones and sensors. It’s quite probable that this is a major reason for the change in policy as well. Applying a pay-as-you-go system would allow the CIA to adopt new technologies at a much faster rate.