The MOD procurement guidance on software safety assurance - assessing and understanding software evidence

The UK Ministry of Defence (MOD) has compiled acquisition guidance for the safety of systems containing complex electronic elements (CEEs) to complement Def Stan 00–56 Issue 4 [4]. The term CEE is defined in the Def Stan and refers to both software and custom hardware, this means that terms such as firmware become redundant from a standards perspective. CEE also encompasses the development processes of Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) which are treated the same as software. The MOD Guidance is applicable to any acquisition project whose CEE has any effect on the safety of the overall system. This paper outlines the strategy and key points of the Guidance. Throughout the paper the term CEE and software are interchanged as they are viewed, from a safety and standards perspective, as the same problem.