Accelerating the Digital Edge requires more than just flexible contracting. While rapid acquisition authorities provide the legal framework to compress timelines from years to months, that speed is lost without a modern, on-demand infrastructure to match. Getting capabilities to the edge requires solving both challenges simultaneously: you need a rapid acquisition vehicle, and you need a rapid DevSecOps delivery platform.

This panel brings together program leadership from the ICBM Digital Futures team and their small business industry partner, SHE BASH LLC, to examine both halves together.

On the acquisition side: This section will detail the strategic decision to transition a promising SBIR Phase II contractor across the "Valley of Death" by executing an Experimental Other Transaction Agreement (OTA) under 10 U.S.C. § 4023. We will cover how this structure allowed us to avoid traditional contracting burdens and achieve day-one execution.

On the delivery side: building Dedzed, an IL5 DevSecOps platform featuring ephemeral, on-demand Kubernetes environments that alleviate the traditional IT provisioning bottleneck. Panelists will discuss how zero-trust access lets distributed teams begin work immediately, and how a fully automated software pipeline—featuring integrated security scanning, Software Bill of Material (SBOM) and Cryptographic Bill of Material (CBOM) generation will allow the government to securely onboard, assess, and evaluate emerging technologies at the speed of relevance.