Toward Deriving a Digital Ontology for Systems Engineering and Acquisition Groups

There is limited integration across the Department of Defense (DoD) acquisition policy documents, DoD acquisition guidelines, and the systems engineering standards. One of the underlying reasons for the lack of integration is the inconsistent terminology across policies and guidelines generated by various organizations and groups. This paper outlines a methodology based on semantic networks and natural language processing methods to assess the similarity of idiosyncratic representation of concepts generated by different groups, in particular acquisition and systems engineering groups. The methodology has practical implications in terms of establishing a shared knowledge base across different organizations and facilitating the development of a digital ontology of systems engineering modernization focus areas relevant to the systems engineering and acquisition groups.