Air Force wants competition strategies for major acquisitions

Air Force program offices must develop a stand-alone competition strategy for all major acquisition category efforts, Air Force Acquisition Executive David Van Buren announced in a Jan. 14 memo.

Among the matters the strategy should address are barriers to competition, and what it would take to remove them. The strategy should also describe how the program will obtain technical data–and if not acquiring it, summarize the business case analysis justifying that decision, the memo says.

Lack of technical data has long been identified as a barrier to competition for military contracts, since when companies hold on to the data, they’re more likely to receive sole source contracts to continue manufacturing a system.

Acquiring technical rights in data can be expensive, at least in the short run, however. Plenty of program and budget officials have often preferred a lower upfront capital expenditure to gain approval for a system, even when foregoing technical data rights increases the likelihood of higher operations and maintenance costs.

The memo directs Air Force officials to prepare the strategy prior to starting the technology and development phase of a major acquisition (aka before Milestone A) and then to update it prior to actual program initiation (Milestone B). Officials should update it again as part of the life cycle management plan submitted prior to production and deployment (Milestone C), the memo adds.

For more:
– download Van Buren’s memo (.pdf)

— by David Perera – Jan. 27, 2011 –  Fierce Government IT