Form G36-0593
MANDATE.HLP

Ada Information Clearinghouse, 1-800-AdaIC-11, 1-703/685-1477

                              THE CONGRESSIONAL Ada MANDATE

A number of people have asked about the Congressional action that mandated the 
use of Ada in all Department of Defense software.

First becoming effective June 1, 1991, the mandate has been included in the 
annual Appropriations bills for the Department of Defense.  Currently, the 
mandate is found in the fiscal-year 1993 Appropriations act -- Public Law 
102-396, approved October 6, 1992.  There, Section 9070 states:

"Notwithstanding any other provisions of law, where cost effective, all 
Department of Defense software shall be written in the programming language 
Ada, in the absence of special exemption by an official designated by the 
Secretary of Defense."

                                     Previous years

The mandate was first included as part of the Appropriations bill for FY 1991 
-- H.R. 5803.  There, it can be found in Section 8092.  It was worded the same 
as above -- except that it additionally included specification of the June 1, 
1991, start date.  The bill was signed by the President on November 5, 1990, 
and became Public Law 101-511.

The same wording as above was also included in the FY 1992 appropriations bill 
-- Public Law 102-172, enacted November 26, 1991.  There, the mandate can be 
found in Section 8073.

                                Implementation questions

Since enactment, the Services have issued statements that may be helpful in 
answering questions about how best to implement the mandate.  Two of these are 
available through the Ada Information Clearinghouse.

"The Air Force Interpretation of the 1991 Congressional Mandate" is available 
in either hardcopy or electronic form (AdaIC form S78, AF-INT91.HLP).

A hardcopy version of the Navy's two-volume Ada Implementation Guide is 
available through the Navy's normal distribution channels.  Also, it is 
available through the Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC -- for DoD 
Installations and defense contractors with DTIC accounts) and the National 
Technical Information Service (NTIS -- for the general public).  For ordering 
purposes, the accession number is AD-A250 791.  (DTIC, Cameron Station, 
Alexandria, VA, 703/274-7633.  NTIS, Department of Commerce, 5285 Port Royal 
Road, Springfield, VA 22161, 703/487-4650.)

Through the AdaIC, the Guide is available in electronic form only (AdaIC file 
NAVAIG92.HLP).

(AdaIC files can be downloaded both from the Ada Joint Program Office (AJPO) 
host (ajpo.sei.cmu.edu) on the Internet and from the AdaIC Bulletin Board 
(703/614-0215, autovon 224-0215).  For more information on accessing these 
sources, you can order AdaIC flyers G/V51 "Public Access to the Ada 
Information Clearinghouse Bulletin Board", file ADA-RBBS.HLP; and G48 "Access 
to Ada Information on the Defense Data Network", file ADA-DDN.HLP.)

It should be noted that the House Report accompanying the original 
House-passed version of H.R. 5803 (for FY 1991) stated that the House 
Appropriations Committee envisioned "that the Office of the Secretary of 
Defense will administer the general provision in a manner that prevents 
disruption to weapon systems that are well into development."  (See below for 
report language.)

                                       Background

The FY 1991 appropriations bill originated in the House as H.R. 5803.  In the 
version reported out of the House and sent to the Senate, this section 
(originally numbered Sec. 8084) had not contained the proviso "where cost 
effective"; as amended by the Senate, the mandate was deleted entirely; when 
House and Senate conferees met to reconcile differences in the two versions, 
they restored the mandate with the "where cost effective" proviso.  With this 
proviso, the mandate was then a part of the final version of the 
appropriations bill passed by both houses and signed by the President.

                                  1990 House reasoning

The following appeared in House Report 101-822, which accompanied the original 
House-passed version of H.R. 5803.

"Ada Programming Language. -- The Department of Defense developed Ada to 
reduce the cost of development and support of software systems written in the 
hundreds of languages used by the DOD through the early 1980s.  Beside the 
training economies of scale arising from a common language, Ada enables 
software cost reduction in several other ways: (1) its constructs have been 
chosen to be building blocks for disciplined software engineering; (2) its 
internal checking inhibits errors in large systems lying beyond the 
feasibility of manual checking; and (3) its separation of software module 
interfaces from their implementations facilitates and encourages reuse of 
already-built and tested program parts.  While each of these advantages is 
important, Ada's encouragement of software engineering is fundamental.  
Software practitioners increasingly believe the application of engineering 
disciplines is the only currently-feasible avenue toward controlling unbridled 
software cost escalation in ever-larger and more complex systems.  In March, 
1987, the Deputy Secretary of Defense mandated use of Ada in DOD weapons 
systems and strongly recommended it for other DOD applications.  This mandate 
has stimulated the development of commercially-available Ada compilers and 
support tools that are fully responsive to almost all DOD requirements.  
However, there are still too many other languages being used in the DOD, and 
thus the cost benefits of Ada are being substantially delayed.  Therefore, the 
Committee has included a new general provision, Section 8084, that enforces 
the DOD policy to make use of Ada mandatory.  It will remove any doubt of full 
DOD transition to Ada, particularly in other than weapons systems 
applications.  It will stimulate DOD to move forward quickly with Ada-based 
software engineering education and cataloguing/reuse systems.  In addition, 
U.S. and commercial users have already expanded tremendously the use of Ada 
and Ada-related technology.  The DOD, by extending its Ada mandate, can 
leverage off these commercial advances.  Navy Ada is considered to be the same 
as Ada for the purposes of this legislation, and the term Ada is otherwise 
defined by ANSI/MIL-STD-1815.  The Committee envisions that the Office of the 
Secretary of Defense will administer the general provision in a manner that 
prevents disruption to weapon systems that are well into development.  The 
Committee directs that applications using or currently planning to use the 
Enhanced Modular Signal Processor (EMSP) be exempted from mandatory use of Ada 
as a matter of policy."

                                 **********************

Copyright 1992, 1993.  IIT Research Institute.  All rights assigned to the 
U.S. Government (Ada Joint Program Office).  Permission to reprint this flyer, 
in whole or in part, is granted, provided the AdaIC is acknowledged as the 
source.  If this flyer is reprinted as a part of a published document, please 
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