How Does the Navy's Tech Playbook Change How You Pitch Government IT?

The Navy's tech framework, now a model for other agencies

The Navy’s successful IT pilots and technology framework, called the Innovation Adoption Kit, have been recognized in a report titled “The Innovation Adoption Kit: A Data-Driven Playbook for Enterprise IT Modernization in Government” published by the IBM Center for The Business of Government. The report draws on a roundtable of leaders from government, Congress, civil society, and industry, with keynote remarks from Navy Chief Technology Officer Justin Fanelli.It offers the Navy’s technology framework as a model IT modernization playbook for other agencies.

Nextgov/FCW reports that, according to Fanelli, after the Navy had a few wins on problems many agencies share, other agencies began copying its approach, and the Navy started sharing what it was doing. Asked what was different, Fanelli said the Navy had “a kit for that” because it had moved from building everything itself to adopting technology quickly. The Navy's framework for technology acquisition became the basis for a roundtable that produced the playbook.

Even so, the playbook is not a regulation, a solicitation, or a contract vehicle. It is a report from outside research groups that draws on Navy practice. Creating no requirements or opportunities on its own, its value for vendors lies in what it infers about agencies’ buying protocols.

The playbook’s recommendations

The playbook recommends knowing what you have, testing new technology against it, and retiring what you replace. Presented as a menu of options rather than a strict sequence, an agency might adopt one recommendation without the others. But vendors should keep them all in mind as they pitch.

The report says the Navy chose five standard outcome measures that apply across its IT portfolios: user time saved or lost, adaptability, cost per user, user experience, and operational resilience. Participants called adaptability, meaning how hard an old system is to change, the most actionable measurement. One participant said proposals that could not map to an outcome were never approved to start. Separately, Fanelli told Nextgov/FCW that the Navy ran only a few true pilots a year before 2025, increased that roughly tenfold to about 25 in 2025, and now has dozens underway across AI, hosting hardware, edge computing, autonomy, and specialized sensors.

The pilots are not experiments for their own sake. Fanelli says ten have moved into enterprise services or programs of record, with more than two dozen potential use cases in the queue. Project Dynamis is one example the Nextgov/FCW article cites. First piloted with the Marine Corps in September 2025, it now deploys the Maven Smart System to major commands and serves as the command-and-control program of record for the Marine Corps.

Why should a non-binding playbook matter to vendors?

Even though it creates no work on its own, the report is useful to program and contracting officials designing new IT solicitations. It recommends that solicitations name the systems that are candidates for replacement and require offerors to show how their solution would outperform and replace them, based on the agency's outcome metrics. A pitch that explains how success will be measured, how a winner scales, and how the old system will be retired is likely to be easier for a program office to support than one that only describes features.

Fanelli also told Nextgov/FCW that private companies are willing to fund their own pilots to show that a capability is already mature. That lets the Navy spread its pilot budget further, because it only has to fund the last stretch before adoption. For a vendor, this may lower the barrier to a first deployment. It may also raise the bar, since a competitor that self-funds a well-measured pilot can set the standard you are compared against.

The common misconception is that a pilot is a foot in the door. It is only a foot in the door if it was built to convert. Fanelli told Nextgov/FCW that the Navy is converting pilots into higher-impact enterprise services instead of leaving hundreds of competing tools in place indefinitely. The report points the same way, suggesting that leaders should consider whether a tool has a realistic path beyond the pilot stage to replace an older system, and recounting the Navy's response to vendors proposing new logistics capabilities: "Which of the systems do you turn off?" That suggests vendors who can show how they would replace existing tools may be better positioned, and pilots with no path to adoption may get less traction. The report also cautions that consolidation does not always mean one vendor. It notes that some competition across organizations or vendors can be useful, and a Navy payroll effort went from 24 systems to 4, not to 1.

The report is a highly informative signal on how to prepare.

Building a pilot proposal that fits this framework

Taking this framework into consideration, you should structure your pitch around five points.

1. Name the incumbent. Identify the system you would replace or augment, and compare against it. The report recommends that solicitations name the systems that are candidates for replacement.
2. Use measures the agency can verify. Use the agency's outcome metrics if it has them. If it has none, the Navy's five measures are a reasonable starting point. Ground benefit claims in concrete measures such as time saved and costs avoided, since the report cautions against exaggerated benefits.
3. Define a trajectory for successful implementation. Describe the path from pilot to enterprise service or program of record. The report's portfolio review asks whether a pilot outperforms the relevant legacy system and should replace it.
4. Write the retirement plan. Say what gets decommissioned, on what timeline, and how data moves, so the agency is not layering your product on top of a legacy system. The report lists migration dates, read-only transitions, and system or subsystem turnoffs as examples of retirement milestones.
5. Decide what you will fund yourself. Scope any privately funded phase to a clear decision point.

This general approach is not a template. The right structure ultimately depends on the agency, the buying vehicle, and the details of the pilot.

What legal and contract issues come with pilots, especially privately funded ones?

Pilots raise the same issues as any government deal:

• Paper before work. Treat a privately funded pilot as a government engagement, and consider getting an agreement in writing before you deploy anything. The right vehicle depends on the agency and the pilot, and rules on what an agency may accept without a proper agreement can apply, so confirm them before you start. The report notes that Congress has expanded the authority to use flexible tools such as Commercial Solutions Openings and mandated their use, so ask which vehicle the agency plans to use.
• Data and IP rights. Decide what the government receives in your software, documentation, and data, and what you keep. Pilot terms can carry over into later production contracts.
• Security and authorization. A pilot that connects to agency systems may trigger authorization and cybersecurity requirements, depending on the agency and the data involved.
• Who owns the measurements. Cost per user and performance results may become the benchmark for the next decision. Consider agreeing on who owns that data and whether the agency can share it.
• Exit and transition terms. The playbook's divestment logic can cut both ways. If your product is later consolidated or replaced, it helps to have set out clear terms on wind-down, data return, and transition support help.
• No right to follow-on work. The playbook does not create a right to a follow-on award. Price and plan the pilot on the assumption that any follow-on may be competed.

These terms are best settled before the pilot starts, when you still have leverage.

What steps should growing technology companies take?

Begin by checking whether your pitch already answers the three questions the playbook raises: what does this replace, how will we measure it, and how does the old system retire. General Legal's Defense Tech and Government Contracts group helps growing technology companies get ready to compete for IT modernization work before the first pilot conversation. We review pilot and commercial agreements, data rights and IP positions, security and flow-down obligations, and teaming arrangements, and we help you structure a proposal around measurable outcomes, a scale-up path, and a retirement plan. If you are preparing a government pilot pitch or deciding whether to self-fund one, reach out to General Legal.

Sources

• Frank Konkel and Christian Robles, Navy's tech playbook serves as 'toolkit' for rest of government, Defense One and Nextgov/FCW, October 23, 2026
• Kevin Hawickhorst, The Innovation Adoption Kit: A Data-Driven Playbook for Enterprise IT Modernization in Government, IBM Center for The Business of Government, August 2026

This post reflects a general framework and is not legal advice for any specific company's situation.