Navy’s tech playbook serves as ‘toolkit’ for rest of government

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The IBM Center for the Business of Government and Foundation for American Innovation published a playbook for enterprise IT modernization over the summer based largely on the U.S. Navy’s successful framework for technology acquisition.

“Basically, they observed something we were doing — we were getting a handful of wins on common problems, and other agencies started copying it, and we started sharing what we were doing,” Navy Chief Technology Officer Justin Fanelli said on the sidelines of the SAP Public Sector Summit on Oct. 14 in Washington, D.C.

“They asked us, ‘What are you doing that’s different from other pockets that aren’t moving as fast?’ And essentially, we said, ‘Oh, we have a kit for that because we moved from the world of build-everything-yourself to a fast adopter,’” Fanelli said.

The aforementioned kit — the Navy’s framework for technology acquisition — became the basis for a roundtable discussion that culminated in the playbook. It gives three recommendations to agencies for modernizing technology systems.

The first recommendation is to understand the systems agencies operate and how they communicate with each other. The playbook says IT mapping best occurs by mapping processes, data and finances.

“To do modernization that actually benefits the portfolio, you need to have a picture of that portfolio going in,” Daniel Chenok, executive director of the IBM Center for the Business of Government, told Nextgov/FCW.

The second recommendation is to measure pilots against existing systems they are meant to replace with standardized outcome measures. The Navy picked user time saved or lost, adaptability, cost per user, user experience and operational resilience metrics to assess technology, the report notes.

Fanelli said that prior to 2025, the Navy was only executing a few true technology pilots each year. That year, the Navy increased its pilot use by ten times to about 25, and in 2026 has “dozens and dozens” of ongoing pilots on everything from AI, hosting hardware, edge computing and autonomy functions to nuanced technology like float sensors.

“It’s a pretty wide scope,” Fanelli said.

The department, he said, is now communicating with the same tech terminology and more transparently with each other about ongoing pilot work, reducing duplicative, siloed efforts.

In addition, the Navy has found the private sector to be a willing partner in piloting its commercial technology. Both decisions have allowed the Navy to increase its pilot proclivity without breaking the bank or budget.

“Instead of using only government money to do piloting, there are just way more private sector companies who are using their own funding to do pilots to say, ‘Hey, this is already a pretty mature capability.’ (Then), We only have to fund the last five yards (to score a touchdown),” Fanelli said.

Several pilot programs are now critical to department operations. For example, Project Dynamis was piloted by the Navy and U.S. Marine Corps in September 2025 to close the “sensor-to-shooter” gap. The program now deploys critical software like the Mavan Smart System to major commands, including the Marine Expeditionary Forces, and is the command-and-control program of record for the Marine Corps.

So far, Fanelli said ten pilots have transitioned to enterprise services or programs of record, and there is a queue of more than two dozen potential use cases.

“Those pilots have converted into, in many cases, designated enterprise services or programs of record,” Fanelli said. “So instead of hundreds of competing things that float around forever, we’re now converting pilots into higher value and higher-impact enterprise services.”

“That is allowing us to cattle-drive legacy [technology],” Fanelli added, referencing Operation Cattle Drive, the Navy’s strategic initiative to identify, consolidate, and retire redundant, insecure and outdated IT systems.

Operation Cattle Drive demands structured divestments from old and outdated technology, and serves as the impetus for the playbook’s third recommendation: to adopt an “acquire while divesting” strategy to ensure agencies do not layer new technology on old systems.

Agencies could meet the strategy by requiring divestment planning in solicitations, incorporating divestment planning in project planning and including retirement milestones in funding plans, the playbook says.

“There’s an old [President Ronald] Reagan quote summarized: ‘The closest thing to life everlasting is being a government program,’” Fanelli said. “How are you actually getting rid of things?”

The playbook builds on recent work from the IBM Center for the Business of Government, including a digital modernization implementation framework and an IT modernization roadmap.

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