Requirements management tools in Department of Defense acquisition programs

(a) Contracting policy guidance Not later than 180 days after the date of the enactment of this section, the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment shall, with respect to solicitations, contracts, and task orders for systems and software engineering programs— (1) require— (A) the use of open, modular, and offeror-agnostic requirements management tools; and (B) that such tools be compatible with— (i) modern data interchange standards (including the Requirements Interchange Format)); and (ii) publicly available application programming interfaces to facilitate integration with contemporary software development environments and tools; (2) require that all contractor-developed user requirements data (including traceability, version history, acceptance criteria, and verification links) are delivered in non-proprietary, human-readable, and machine-readable formats that are fully portable across platforms; (3) require all program executive officers, program managers, and contracting officers to— (A) ensure that contract requirements are not tied to specific offerors in order to enable full and open competition across software toolsets and platforms; (B) evaluate the interoperability, data portability, and openness of proposed requirements management solutions during source selection and technical reviews; and (C) give priority to tools and platforms that demonstrate alignment with modern software engineering principles, including traceability, automation, real-time collaboration, and extensibility through application programming interfaces and plug-in architectures; (4) prohibit reliance on proprietary or closed-source tools that limit interoperability or constrain access, reuse, or long-term data ownership; and (5) encourage the use of cloud-native, collaborative, and scalable software solutions for managing user requirements that align with best practices for agile and development, security, and operation development environments. (b) Report to Congress Not later than 270 days after the date of enactment of this section, the Secretary of Defense shall submit to the congressional defense committees a report describing— (1) the actions taken by each Secretary of a military department and Defense Agency to implement subsection (a); and (2) any challenges with respect to such implementation and strategies for resolving such challenges. (c) Definitions In this section: (1) The term program executive officer means an individual described in section 1732(a) of title 10, United States Code. (2) The term requirements management tool means a software capability used to capture, trace, analyze, and manage user, system, and software requirements across the acquisition lifecycle.