Army CIO announces Apps for Army competition

 The Army announced today it is starting a competition named Apps for the Army, aimed at fostering the creative development of new applications for use in the .mil community.

Lt. Gen. Jeff Sorenson, Army chief information officer/G-6, said the competition is intended to reduce the time the time it takes to develop new technology applications for the service. But it’s also a way to tap into, and propagate, many of the practical ideas warfighters are developing on their own to share and use information on the battlefield, Sorenson said.

Sorenson said the Army is finalizing two issues: the platform for developing the applications, and the process for making data available for use on the applications. It is likely that Forge.mil, a collaborative development environment hosted by the Defense Information Systems Agency, would emerge as the primary development platform, he said.

Sorenson said he expected the final details of the program, and a contract for managing Apps for Army, would be completed by the end of September.

“Apps for the Army will help unleash and showcase the creative capabilities of the.mil community while producing applications of real value to the warfighter,” said Sorenson.

But it also addresses the practical need to enhance the technology tools for warfighters with limited budgets said Gen. Nicholas Justice, Program Executive Officer, Command, Control and Communications-Tactical, Army.

“If I can get our soldiers to do the development, I can deliver more capability to the warfighter,” without having to ask the Pentagon for more money, Justice said.

Apps for the Army borrows a page from similar initiatives effort launched by the District of Columbia, with its Apps for Democracy competition and the federal government’s Apps for America program. But while those programs led to the applications aimed at making government information more readily accessible to the public, the goal of Apps for Army’s is to focus on applications that help extend the capabilities of the military’s warfighters.

Sorenson said the Apps for Army initiative would serve as a pilot program with the Defense Department .