DIA-Enterprise Digital Modernization Acceleration (EDMA) Challenge

Description
**REOPENED on 07 AUG 2026 with closing date 30 SEP 2026.**
Enterprise Digital Modernization Acceleration (EDMA - MAVERICK) is a challenge to rapidly prototype, test, validate, and transition enterprise-scale artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities - including novel agentic AI systems - to enable the Agency to achieve Initial Operating Capability (IOC) and Full Operating Capability (FOC) on an operational timeline.
EDMA - MAVERICK combines rapid acquisition mechanisms (One Nation Innovation OTA) with enterprise delivery and governance to accelerate modernization, reduce vendor lock-in, and field resilient AI capabilities across multi-cloud, edge, and disconnected, denied, intermittent, and limited bandwidth (DDIL) environments.
The initiative is anchored on a Digital Modernization Accelerator (MAVERICK) Hub-and-Spoke operating model in which a central AI Hub provides shared platform, security, governance, and assurance capabilities while mission-focused Spokes deliver prioritized use cases, prototypes, and operational deployments.
EDMA - MAVERICK is intended to enable vendor-agnostic capability delivery, multi-vendor ecosystem collaboration, and transition pathways that support government ownership and long-term sustainment.
Problem Statement
The Agency must modernize at operational tempo while adversaries accelerate development and employment of sophisticated AI capabilities, including agentic AI systems that can operate autonomously at scale.
Current modernization efforts are constrained by: long acquisition lead times; fragmented and vendor-specific technical stacks; insufficient multi-classification data governance and cross-domain integration; limited enterprise-wide MLOps/DevSecOps and continuous monitoring; and uneven TEVV coverage that is not optimized for agentic AI-specific risks (e.g., adversarial goal injection, emergent multi-agent coordination failures).
EDMA - MAVERICK seeks to close the acquisition and delivery gap by operationalizing rapid prototyping and transition-to-production pathways, while establishing robust governance guardrails and assurance practices that scale across mission Spokes and across classification domains.
Overall Objective
Establish a challenge driven acquisition and delivery mechanism that enables the Agency to rapidly identify, engage, and contract with innovative vendors - including agentic AI specialists - to deliver prototype solutions and stand up the MAVERICK AI Hub-and-Spoke operational model.
Deliver IOC by 30 April 2026 (or by 41 days post-award) and FOC by 30 September 2026 by implementing: (1) a unified enterprise AI platform with continuous monitoring, (2) expanded independent Test, Evaluation, Verification, and Validation (TEVV) and counter-AI red teaming, and (3) initial mission applications and scalable operating procedures.
Topics
Enterprise Systems, AI/ML (Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning):