Acquisition Strategy | The Contracting Education Academy

January 4, 2019 By cs

Someone is waging a secret war to undermine the Pentagon’s huge cloud contract

As some of the biggest U.S. technology companies have lined up to bid on the $10 billion contract to create a massive Pentagon cloud computing network, the behind-the-scenes war to win it has turned ugly.

In the past several months, a private investigative firm has been shopping around to Washington reporters a 100-plus-page dossier raising the specter of corruption on the part of senior Defense Department and private company officials in the competition for the JEDI cloud contract. But at least some of the dossier’s conclusions do not stand up to close scrutiny.

The dossier insinuates that a top aide to Defense Secretary Jim Mattis worked with Mattis and others to steer the contracting process to favor Amazon Web Services, or AWS — and enrich the aide. The aim of the dossier seems clear: to prevent the deal from going solely to AWS, the odds-on favorite in part because it operates the CIA’s classified commercial cloud. Far less clear, however, is who backed its creation and distribution.

It’s an unusually hardball form of backroom maneuvering in the world of lucrative but rigidly controlled defense contracting. The firm that prepared the dossier, RosettiStarr, shopped it to various Washington reporters earlier this year. Defense One was given a copy in May. At the time, RossettiStar President and CEO Rich Rosetti declined to reveal who funded the firm’s efforts.

Former defense officials told Defense One they received inquiries about the allegations from the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Reuters, and the Intercept. For months, the accusations went unaired by news outlets, including Defense One and Nextgov, sister publications in Atlantic Media’s Government Executive Media Group.

But in the past few weeks, some of the information in the dossier has surfaced in various publications. Now that the dossier’s targets have been publicly accused, they are speaking out. In exclusive interviews with Defense One and Nextgov, they vehemently deny any wrongdoing and seek to turn the spotlight on their mysterious accusers.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2018/08/someone-waging-secret-war-undermine-pentagons-huge-cloud-contract/150685/

December 27, 2018 By cs

Three competing options for acquiring innovation

The DoD’s technological edge is eroding.

Since 2015, the department has pursued a strategy to regain the lead. During the Obama administration, it was called the Third Offset. The Trump administration has abandoned that nomenclature, but it is pursuing the same objective.

The DoD seeks dominance in robotics, artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, and three-dimensional printing, among other fields. It recognizes, however, that such innovation will not come from the usual sources — government labs or the defense industrial base.

Nondefense firms have a decisive lead: The center of gravity in cutting edge, military applicable research is shifting abruptly away from the defense establishment to relatively new commercial firms. The DoD must engage with these nondefense firms to build the next generation of weapon systems. But how should it do so?

Two decades ago, defense economists David Parker and Keith Hartley, mapped the options for procurement along a continuum. On the far left, managerial diktat determines sourcing, and prices have little role in the process. On the far right is a fully competitive market, where the “relationship between buyer and supplier is transitory, non-committal beyond the current purchase, and arm’s length”; between these extremes are, from left to right, subsidiary purchases, joint ventures, partnerships, networks, preferred suppliers, and adversarial competition.

Keiran Walsh, Yale professor of economics, distilled these options down to three:

[T]here are three basic ways of getting people to do what one wants done. One can force them to
behave as one wishes them to. One can give them a set of incentives that aligns their interests with
one’s own. Finally, one can try to shape the values that they hold so that they will naturally want to
do what you wish them to do.

Walsh’s three alternatives, Parker and Hartley explain, correspond to coercion, competition, and long-term partnering. Of course, the same option needn’t be chosen for every procurement, and perhaps different alternatives may work better in some cases than in others. But the DoD must choose from these options as it determines how to buy innovation from nondefense commercial suppliers and perhaps should identify a default that works best in most cases.

Keep reading this paper at: https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/Portals/10/ASPJ/journals/Volume-32_Issue-4/V-Schoeni.pdf

December 14, 2018 By cs

Marine cyber command is getting in on other transaction contracting

The Marine Corps cyber arm is about ready to sign its first contract using the lightly regulated Other Transaction Authority given to select agencies to spur research, development and acquisition of bleeding-edge technologies without having to abide by the Federal Acquisition Regulation.

Marine Corps Forces Cyberspace Command, or MARFORCYBER, officials expect to sign their first OT contract on or before Dec. 17, Command Executive Director Gregg Kendrick told Nextgov. Kendrick said MARFORCYBER, in conjunction with Marine Corps Systems Command, has been working on the contract since May, though the hard work began in earnest in July.

The project will focus on cybersecurity and big data, including how to protect the Marines’ troves of data, as well as how to use that data to better protect the rest of the enterprise.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.nextgov.com/it-modernization/2018/12/marine-cyber-command-getting-other-transaction-contracting/153339/

December 6, 2018 By cs

IG shines light on GSA’s major management challenges

The General Services Administration faces significant management challenges — including recovering costs and filling critical positions — as it attempts to become the government’s “premier provider of efficient and effective acquisition,” according to the agency’s inspector general.

The agency’s many initiatives to improve procurement have left customers trying to use tools that don’t work and facing delays in critical projects like the transition of agency telecommunications to the Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions contract.

These and other management and performance challenges were identified by the GSA Office of Inspector General in a report released Monday.

The agency reported a net loss of $8 million in 2017 to its Acquisition Services Fund, a revolving fund that is supposed to cover costs and operating expenses of the Federal Acquisition Service’s business units, including the Office of Information Technology Category and the Technology Transformation Services. To better review expenses and billable work, the agency shifted TTS and the tech group 18F in 2017 under FAS after previous reports that 18F wouldn’t be in the black until at best fiscal 2018.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.nextgov.com/cio-briefing/2018/12/ig-shines-light-gsas-major-management-challenges/153256/

November 27, 2018 By cs

DoD ready to further define and expand fast moving procurement vehicles

The Defense Department’s acquisition office is planning on utilizing and further defining two expanded authorities focused on speed in the next few months.

DoD’s will release detailed policy early next year on “middle tier” acquisition — an authority given to the Pentagon in the 2016 defense authorization act, said Ellen Lord, DoD undersecretary for acquisition and sustainment.

Middle tier acquisition is an interim approach that focuses on delivering products in two to five years. It allows DoD to work outside traditional acquisition regulation if the program abides by certain criteria. The acquisition vehicle must use rapid prototyping or rapid fielding to deliver innovative technology and products that meet emerging military needs.

Keep reading this article at: https://federalnewsnetwork.com/acquisition/2018/11/dod-ready-to-further-define-and-expand-fast-moving-procurement-vehicles/

As some of the biggest U.S. technology companies have lined up to bid on the $10 billion contract to create a massive Pentagon cloud computing network, the behind-the-scenes war to win it has turned ugly.

The DoD’s technological edge is eroding.

The Marine Corps cyber arm is about ready to sign its first contract using the lightly regulated Other Transaction Authority given to select agencies to spur research, development and acquisition of bleeding-edge technologies without having to abide by the Federal Acquisition Regulation.

The General Services Administration faces significant management challenges — including recovering costs and filling critical positions — as it attempts to become the government’s “premier provider of efficient and effective acquisition,” according to the agency’s inspector general.

The Defense Department’s acquisition office is planning on utilizing and further defining two expanded authorities focused on speed in the next few months.

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