US Army to launch Apps for Army Competition

In the style of the Apps for America competitions, the US Army announced at the Gov 2.0 summit that it would hold a competition for soldiers to develop software to help the army fight wars and carry out its missions.

Reported in Information Week Government, Gov 2.0: Army Announces Apps For Army Competition, the Army views the approach as a way to break down silos and create cheap and effective software, helping reduce the cost of having military-grade applications developed.

All entries will be hosted on the Defense Information Systems agency's open source code repository, Forge.mil.

Given the massive savings reported by Washington DC when it ran a similar district-based competition, it will be interesting to see the level of value that can be achieved within the armed forces.