On Tuesday, June 5, The Open Group Future Airborne Capability Environment (FACE™) Consortium will hold the FACE Consortium Exposition Day at the Patuxent River Naval Air Museum in Lexington Park, Maryland, to showcase applications and tools that promote reusable software capabilities for unifying DoD aviation systems. The event will take place and feature over 20 partners from government and the avionics industry showcasing examples of products aligned with the new FACE Technical Standard that help ensure warfighters can quickly and affordably benefit from continued software innovations.
The FACE Consortium is an aviation-focused professional group made up of avionics industry suppliers, customers and users. It provides a vendor-neutral forum for industry and the U.S. government to work together to develop and consolidate the open standards, best practices, guidance documents and business models necessary to achieve these results.
The exposition will consist of examples of FACE tools and applications by avionics industry partners from the FACE Consortium. The tools and applications showcased at the event are candidates for potential adoption of the FACE Technical Standard.
The details of the event are below and can be found in this flyer.
This event is free of charge and the venue is open to all visitors who are interested in open standards and open architectures for aviation systems. There will also be a social event held afterward from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. at The Tides Restaurant.
Judy Cerenzia is currently The Open Group’s Program Director for the Future Airborne Capability Environment (FACE) Consortium. Judy has 10+ years senior program management experience leading cross-functional and cross-organizational teams to reach consensus, define, and meet business and technical goals during project lifecycles.
The key risks associated with supply chains used by federal agencies to procure IT equipment, software or services
The extent to which selected national security-related agencies have addressed IT supply chain risks
The extent to which national security-related federal agencies have determined that their telecommunications networks contain foreign-developed equipment, software or services
The extent to which private industry has addressed IT supply chain risks
This was the first time that an Open Group employee has testified in front of Congress, and the invitation was a testament to The Open Group’s work as a vendor-neutral certification authority business for over 20 years as well as the traction that The Open Group Trusted Technology Forum (OTTF) has made over the past year.
You can see the full session on the YouTube video embedded below. The Chair and Ranking Member’s opening statements underscored three things for me:
That this problem is both widespread and critical – both government agencies and many private companies are struggling to address global supply chain vulnerabilities
There is a clear need for collaboration and standards, as well as a need to bring transparency on conformance to such standards at all links in the supply chain.
The most critical issues are tainted code / malware and counterfeit products in the supply chain – exactly the focus areas of OTTF
We launched OTTF in December 2010 with the objective of reducing risks to IT products that can be introduced through vulnerable supply chain and development processes. Our goal has been to help the technology industry build with integrity and enable customer organizations and governments to buy with confidence. We have worked closely with the U.S. government throughout the process of developing the Open Trusted Technology Provider Standard (O-TTPS). The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) was a founding member of the forum, and the impetus for the forum came out of a collaborative initiative between the DoD and industry verticals looking into cybersecurity for acquisitions. I was very gratified that the DoD witness singled out The Open Group’s efforts on OTTF and highlighted their participation in the forum.
Recognizing that a secure global supply chain is important to all governments, one of OTTF’s main objectives is to outreach to other governments around the world in much the same way they have with the U.S. To that end, forum members plan to extend an invitation to participate in the development of the standard and planned accreditation program for trusted technology providers, which will include governments, providers, integrators and component suppliers from around the world. To preview OTTF’s work, you can download the current draft of the Open-Trusted Technology Provider Standard (Snapshot).
The subcommittee already had a strong background on OTTF’s mission and its current initiatives and was very interested to hear what global procurement strategies and best practices OTTF is planning to include in the O-TTPS and how these best practices could be applied within the U.S. government to ensure the security of supply chain both nationally and globally. The subcommittee noted Open Group’s previous work with international standards such as International Standardization for Organization (ISO) as encouraging, illustrating that the global supply chain is taking a step in the right direction under the stewardship of The Open Group.
Overall, the hearing was very positive, and the whole experience validated the work that OTTF has produced thus far. We anticipate that the standard will have a significant impact on how organizations procure large commercial off-the-shelf information and communication technology over the next few years across the global supply chain and are excited to see governments take an active interest in securing the global supply chain.
David Lounsbury is The Open Group‘s Chief Technology Officer, previously VP ofCollaboration Services. Dave holds three U.S. patents and is based in the U.S.
I’m amazed that only 19 months ago we kicked off The Open Group Future Airborne Capability Environment (FACE™) Consortium, a collaborative group of avionics industry and U.S. Army, Navy and Air Force contributors who are working to develop standards for a common operating environment to support portable capability applications across Department of Defense (DoD) avionics systems. Our goal is to create an avionics software environment on installed computing hardware of war-fighting platforms that enables FACE applications and components to be deployed on different platforms without impact to the FACE applications. This approach to portable applications and interoperability will reduce development and integration costs and reduce the time to field new avionics capabilities.
I’m particularly proud of the consortium’s Technical Working Group, authors of Version 1.0 of The Technical Standard for Future Airborne Capability Environment (FACE™) Reference Architecture, which was just approved for official publication as an Open Group Standard. What they have accomplished in a year and a half is nothing less than phenomenal. The publication is available at The Open Group’s Bookstore.
The FACE Consortium’s unique strategy and structure is changing the way government and industry do business by breaking down barriers to portability—exchanging proprietary solutions for a common and standardized computing environment and components. To enable this climate change, the consortium’s Business Working Group has also published the FACE Business Guide, which defines stakeholders and their roles within a new business model; discusses business scenarios and defines how stakeholders will impact or be impacted by business drivers in each; and investigates how contract terms, software licensing agreements and IP rights may need to change to support procuring common components with standardized interfaces versus a proprietary black-box solution from a prime contractor. The Business Guide is also available at The Open Group’s Bookstore.
We’ve grown from 74 individuals representing 14 organizations in June 2010 to over 375 participants from 39 government and industry partners to date. Our next consortium members’ meeting will be in Baltimore, MD February 29 – March 1 2012, hosted by Northrop Grumman. I’m looking forward to seeing FACE colleagues, facilitating their working meeting, and continuing our mission to develop, evolve and publish a realistic open FACE™ architecture, standards and business model, and robust industry conformance program that will be supported and adopted by FACE customers, vendors, and integrators.
Judy Cerenzia is currently The Open Group’s Program Director for the Future Airborne Capability Environment (FACE) Consortium. Judy has 10+ years senior program management experience leading cross-functional and cross-organizational teams to reach consensus, define, and meet business and technical goals during project lifecycles.
Judy Cerenzia is currently The Open Group’s Program Director for the Future Airborne Capability Environment (FACE) Consortium. Judy has 10+ years senior program management experience leading cross-functional and cross-organizational teams to reach consensus, define, and meet business and technical goals during project lifecycles. 
