Published on
October 17, 2024
The Department of Defense (DoD) addresses intricate and time-sensitive missions, necessitating a streamlined approach for Rapid Source Selection and Proposal Evaluation. This case study explores how Lazarus AI assists this critical operation with cutting-edge technology, enhancing decision-making in challenging scenarios. Through a tailored integration of AI capabilities, Lazarus AI supported the DoD in achieving enhanced source selection and proposal evaluation, thereby improving operational efficiency and effectiveness, a critical aspect of mission success.
The Department of Defense (DoD) faces the ongoing challenge of acquiring and fielding new technologies to maintain operational superiority. However, its current manual proposal evaluation process is slow and time-consuming, often delaying the adoption of critical capabilities needed to close technology gaps in national defense. This case study demonstrates how Lazarus AI's RikAI model has transformed the acquisition process by speeding up proposal evaluations by 80% to 92% without compromising accuracy, thereby improving the DoD's ability to remain competitive in an evolving defense environment.
The DoD is responsible for managing a vast $310.7B budget, with $96B (31%) dedicated to acquisitions. However, the manual and labor-intensive proposal evaluation process hinders the DoD's ability to quickly assess, test, and adopt new technologies. This delay can cause the DoD to fall behind adversaries in rapidly fielding essential capabilities. The traditional process, which includes preliminary reviews, technical evaluations, and pricing negotiations, can take weeks or even months, reducing agility and increasing costs.
The DoD acquisitions workforce also faces challenges related to talent management, skill gaps, and workforce turnover, which further exacerbate delays in evaluating proposals. This necessitates a solution that can automate and accelerate the evaluation process while maintaining transparency, explainability, and reducing cognitive load on the acquisition teams.
The manual proposal evaluation process within the DoD cannot keep pace with the rapidly evolving tactics and technologies used by peer adversaries. This results in delayed fielding of essential capabilities, increased costs, and significant risk to national security. A modernized approach is required to speed up the process, reduce cognitive load on evaluation teams, and ensure the DoD can keep up with the future operating environment.
Lazarus AI's RikAI, a Multimodal Large Language Model, offers a tailored AI solution designed to enable the DoD's proposal evaluation process. By automating key stages of the evaluation, RikAI has demonstrated its versatility and ability to ingest, analyze, and evaluate proposals at a speed and scale previously unachievable.
Key functionalities of RikAI include:
Since its implementation, RikAI has demonstrated substantial efficiency gains, increasing the speed of proposal evaluations by 80% to 92%, while maintaining a high level of accuracy. What once took weeks or months can now be completed in days or even minutes, drastically reducing the time to evaluate hundreds or even thousands of proposals.
The DoD's manual proposal evaluation process is no longer viable in the fast-paced, technology-driven defense environment. RikAI offers a solution that not only accelerates the process by 80% to 92%, but also ensures accuracy, transparency, and explainability—key requirements for mitigating risk and maintaining trust in automated systems. By leveraging RikAI, the DoD can drastically reduce the time needed to evaluate proposals, allowing the swift adoption of critical technologies that will equip warfighters with the tools they need to remain competitive in the future operating environment.