challenge grant | The Contracting Education Academy

May 11, 2016 By AMK

USAID uses new contracting technique to try to lower barriers to entry

The United States Agency for International Development has started accepting applications for a $30 million grand challenge calling on innovators to submit ideas to combat Zika and “the disease threats of tomorrow.”

“To get ahead of infectious diseases like Zika, we need to move quickly to find and scale new tools and transformative solutions,” USAID Administrator Gayle Smith said in a statement.

The grand challenge is an addendum to the to the USAID Development Innovation Accelerator Broad Agency Announcement for Global Health, and is an example of how the agency is increasingly turning to a contracting technique used elsewhere in the U.S. government to see if the model might work to involve new actors in addressing development challenges.

As USAID looks to partner with a more diverse group of actors, the agency is contending with regulatory restrictions that can be cumbersome or limiting. The Broad Agency Announcement, or BAA, may be a way to address that challenge. The BAA is a new way for the agency to communicate with partners to design solutions before determining what procurement tool may be the best fit.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.devex.com/news/usaid-uses-new-contracting-technique-to-try-to-lower-barriers-to-entry-87858

November 13, 2015 By AMK

Challenges buy government what contracts can’t

When the government needs to buy supplies or capital items, or it needs to develop a new bomber, it awards a contract. But what if it needs answers that aren’t for sale in the classic sense?

Jenn Gustetic says contracts are how you access value available from companies. But over the past five years, the executive branch has found an effective and relatively inexpensive way to tap into the brain power of individuals. Namely, challenge grants.

Gustetic is the assistant director for open innovation at the Office of Science and Technology Policy. On my show this morning, she noted that as the challenge grant program crosses its fifth birthday, it’s awarded 450 prizes to some 200,000 individuals for a total of about $150 million.

Keep reading this article at: http://federalnewsradio.com/temin/2015/10/challenges-buy-government-contracts-cant/

January 23, 2015 By AMK

Air Force to reshape ‘cost curve’ via targeted acquisition reforms

The Air Force is kicking off a series of targeted acquisition initiatives that its leaders hope will bring in more competition, cut out internal bureaucracy and ultimately lead to faster, cheaper procurements.

Deborah Lee James, the secretary of the Air Force, announced the plans under an overall banner she dubbed “Bending the Cost Curve.” She described the initiative as a series of actions that are complementary to DoD’s Better Buying Power initiative — but more specific and tailored than the DoD-wide project.

James said the changes, which the service developed after a months-long series of roundtables with industry groups, will help the Air Force do a better job of communicating with its existing vendor base, welcoming new firms into the fold and removing bureaucratic processes that seem to serve little purpose other than to slow things down.

“We are simply too slow in all that we do,” she told the Atlantic Council Wednesday evening. “Here’s one horrifying factoid: We currently average 17 months to award a contract in situations where we already know there’s only one supplier who can do the work.”

To tackle costs on its major systems, the Air Force will institutionalize a new program that will attempt to make price more of an independent variable in the service’s decisions about precisely what it wants its weapons systems to do.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.federalnewsradio.com/395/3781054/Air-Force-to-reshape-cost-curve-via-targeted-acquisition-reforms

The United States Agency for International Development has started accepting applications for a $30 million grand challenge calling on innovators to submit ideas to combat Zika and “the disease threats of tomorrow.”

When the government needs to buy supplies or capital items, or it needs to develop a new bomber, it awards a contract. But what if it needs answers that aren’t for sale in the classic sense?

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