The Defense Innovation Unit Experimental encourages defense companies to work with nontraditional contractors through the organization’s technology development programs, SpaceNews reported Tuesday.

DIUx has awarded 67 contracts over the past three years and majority of the contract awards went to companies that do not generally function as government contractors.

The organization selects contractors to build prototypes through “other transaction” agreements as part of a procurement strategy called Commercial Solutions Openings.

Col David Robinson, acting military director and U.S. Army lead for DIUx, told SpaceNews that the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act has expanded OTAs to allow further involvement of conventional defense firms.

The report said DIUx’s programs covers the areas of cyber; space and information technology; autonomy and counter-unmanned aircraft systems, human systems augmentation and artificial intelligence.

The Defense Information Systems Agency has developed and implemented a program to automate the authorization of systems access requests.

DISA’s Ecosystem Cyber Services Line of Business created the System Access Management application in aims to automate the process for the Defense Department‘s Form 2875: System Authorization Access Request, the agency said Tuesday.

The agency has recently completed the creation of accounts and process access requests for around 6,000 DISA personnel who can use the application for systems such as those on the Non-classified Internet Protocol Router Network and the Secure Internet Protocol Router Network.

The SAM module is integrated into the Enterprise Security Posture System and features auto-population of information for subsequent entries and form data storage that allows the creation of reports to address insider threat vulnerabilities.

DISA expects the application to reduce the request process to days or minutes and facilitate the elimination of paper use and form transfers through email and local access databases and shared drives.

Teams from the agency’s computing ecosystem will work for the continuous development of the module that includes compliance with the requirement to revalidate privileged system accounts every 90 days.

The agency intends to open SAM for its mission partners by summer.

DISA currently develops a dashboard for the accreditation of mission partners and for the creation of reports on real-time user access to systems.

Defense Department officials have said they believe an enterprise-wide cloud computing platform can help U.S. warfighters receive mission-critical data faster, DoD news reported Tuesday.

John Gibson II, chief management officer of the DoD, told reporters Tuesday at the Pentagon that data accessibility, timeliness and security are key to gain a competitive edge in the battlefield.

Robert Daigle, director of cost analysis and program evaluation at the Office of the Secretary of Defense, added that adopting a single cloud platform will help the department process data at speed to support combat missions.

DoD aims to release a final request for proposals on the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure Cloud contract in May and name a winning contractor within the current fiscal year.

The Defense Department has requested public insight on its draft procurement guidance that requires the adoption of a National Institute of Standards and Technology rule that safeguards controlled unclassified information in non-federal systems and organizations.

The Defense Acquisition Regulations Systems said in a Federal Register notice posted Tuesday DoD drafted the document to streamline the evaluation process of system security plans and plans of actions on information systems, as well as to help implement untouched security requirements.

NIST Special Publication 800-171 requires non-federal agencies to create a system security plan that will include explanations on how the specified security requirements are met or are going to be addressed.

DoD intends to put value in assessing the risk of an unimplemented requirement on information systems and evaluating the risk of a deficient security prerequisite.

DoD will accept public comments through May 31.