As anticipated last week’s UID Forum had heavy attendance with more than 900 participants. This shows a steadily growing awareness of UID and a groundswell of implementation.
During the course of the show I conducted a round table discussion, as subject matter expert, for the UID Registry. Our product manager Jim Daniels was also on the panel. This exercise revealed inconsistencies in the general practice and execution of UID implementation. An example of this inconsistency is the assigning of UIDs to contracts along with the inherent flow-down obligations. In other words, the rules of engagement from supplier to supplier and from supplier to customer are unclear. For instance, many suppliers thought that the “how” to implement UID had to be dictated to them by the customer (e.g. choice of construct, transmitting to the UID Registry). This assumption is incorrect. The prime or the DoD customer can dictate the DFARS obligation. but it is up to the supplier to implement choices such as the UID construct and the method of transmitting data to the UID Registry.
If you are a supplier, imagine what it would be like if every customer dictated a different approach to implementing UID! You would go crazy customizing UID production for each individual customer.
Take a stance. Review your UID obligations from a policy perspective, and then set your course for implementing UID based upon your current production environment, information systems, and workflow. At that point, when you receive the DFARS in your next contract, you won’t have to reinvent the wheel.
All in all it was a great show with many good presentations that addressed relevant topics. One of those topics was about combating counterfeit in the supply chain. My next blog will talk more about that.
