Towards Real-time Program Awareness via Lexical Link Analysis �

Abstract

DoD acquisition is an extremely complex system, comprised of myriad stakeholders, processes, people, activities, and organizations in an effort to provide the most useful capabilities to warfighters at the best possible value to the government. This effort is being accomplished by acquisition analysts who despite years of experience are encumbered by mountains of available data. To assist the analyst, we consider that the cognitive interface between decision-makers and a complex system may be expressed in a range of terms or features, i.e., specific vocabulary to describe attributes. This offers the opportunity to more easily compare two competing technologies, which, in turn, may be compared to the Navy warfighter requirements. This effort can allow decision-makers to become aware of what programs, systems, and specific features are available for acquisition and how well they match warfighter's needs and requirements with greater effect and immediacy possibly in real-time. We present a data-driven automation method, namely, Lexical Link Analysis (LLA), to facilitate and automate acquisition system self-awareness.