Opening Statement (As Prepared)

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Thank you, Chairman Gallagher.

I would also like to welcome The Honorable Ellen Lord, former Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment, Dr. Richard Murray, Professor of Control & Dynamical Systems and Bioengineering at CalTech, Dr. Daniel Patt, Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute. Thank you for appearing before the subcommittee this morning.

In the interest of time and upcoming votes, I will keep my remarks brief. We face an imperative to better the ways in which the Department of Defense acquires, develops, and sustains software. The traditional means, structures, and incentives of the DoD procurement system simply are not designed for the kind of agile software development practices that are now industry standard. If we hope to keep pace with the private sector - and with our adversaries and competitors - we must be willing to confront these differences and find innovative solutions. Continuous improvement of software, identification, and recruitment of digital talent, and the managing the risks to existing systems that may come with rapid adoption of new capabilities are all challenges that must be addressed if we hope to successfully compete in an increasingly data-driven future.

And with that, I want to again thank our witnesses for appearing before us today. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

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