Navy PEO IWS Releases Open Architecture Assessment Tool

December 6, 2006 // Published as a news service by IHS

The U.S. Navy Program Executive Office, Integrated Warfare Systems (PEO IWS), chair of the Naval Open Architecture Enterprise Team released version 1.1 of the Open Architecture Assessment Tool (OAAT).

OAAT is an improved tool for assessing the "openness" of Navy and U.S. Marine Corps programs.

Openness refers to both technical and business characteristics of a program that supports modular design, easy interoperability with other systems, extensive employment of commercial standards, enhanced competition for development and support and facilitates rapid technology insertion, according to the PEO IWS.

The new version of the OAAT also includes the functionality of the Open Systems Joint Task Force (OSJTF) Modular Open System Approach (MOSA) Program Assessment and Rating Tool (PART).

With the help of feedback provided by Naval Open Architecture (OA) stakeholders and other users of version 1.0 of the OAAT, the PEO IWS said it improved the easy-to-use, Excel-based tool designed to provide a quantifiable estimate for a program or system with regard to its openness.

In addition to improving the functionality of the OAAT, version 1.1 includes OSJTF's MOSA PART questionnaire, which the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) requires all acquisition category programs to complete.

The OAAT provides an assessment of the user's responses to questions about the business technical and business practices of the program and plots its "as-is" state on the open architecture assessment model (OAAM). The OAAM is the Navy's approved 5x5 matrix with a technical (x) axis and business (y) axis. The OAAM provides an as-is depiction of a program's level of openness.

After receiving several hundred comments on the earlier version of the tool from Navy and industry stakeholders, version 1.1 of the OAAT was updated and is publicly available from the Naval OA Special Interest Area web site at https://acc.dau.mil/oa. Click on Tools to download the latest version.

Source: U.S. Navy Program Executive Office, Integrated Warfare Systems, Naval Sea Systems Command.