Improving Safety Management in Defence Acquisition

Improved management of safety during procurement of computer-based safety-critical systems is one of the key concerns of the Australian Government’s Department of Defence Software Acquisition Reform program. This paper reports some lessons learnt from a task currently being undertaken by the Defence Acquisition Organisation, Defence Science Technology Organisation (DSTO) and the Software Verification Research Centre (SVRC) to study management of safety and implementation of software safety standards in a range of defence projects. Effective safety management requires the identification of potential issues, and planning for their resolution, early in the procurement process. The lessons learnt are general and may be of benefit to other organisations involved in specification and acquisition of safety-critical software systems.