collaboration | The Contracting Education Academy

September 6, 2019 By cs

Budgets require industry-government cooperation

We should all celebrate the recent passage and signing of the 2019 Bipartisan Budget Act that ended the federal budget impasse and did away with the destructive spending caps imposed by the 2011 Budget Control Act.

Thankfully, the way legislators wrote the budget deal and its two-year coverage means the threat of sequestration has finally passed.

Observers will note, however, the budget deal hints at the feared decline of defense resourcing going forward. While the defense topline grows by 2.64 percent in 2020, that growth slides to 0.33 percent in 2021; and these percentages do not consider inflation. That is well below the 3-5 percent real growth after inflation called for by former Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis. He saw that growth level as a requirement to regain readiness and make the necessary investments in modernization and recapitalization to ensure the U.S. military can carry out the National Defense Strategy.

While defense experts, think tanks and the Defense Department all call for fully resourcing the strategy, harbingers of flatter defense budgets yet again call for the hard thinking required to get the absolute most out of every defense dollar spent. One critical avenue of that approach is better government-industry collaboration. The more government can work with industry to identify key technology and workforce investments, telegraph future requirements, and develop innovative contracting vehicles, among other things, the more efficiently and cost-effectively industry can provide the best services and products to our warfighters over time.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2019/8/29/ndia-perspective-budgets-require-industry-government-cooperation

September 3, 2019 By cs

How to manage risk along the federal government supply chain

Even the most sophisticated federal agencies have found it difficult to effectively measure and evaluate the cyber risk of their contractor base.

The U.S. federal government relies on an ever-expanding supply chain of tens of thousands of contractors and subcontractors to provide critical services, hold and maintain sensitive data, and perform key functions. While this supply chain is essential to agencies’ fundamental operations, it also increases the number of access point nefarious actors have to their systems and data and, consequently, puts agencies and sensitive data at greater risk.

Even the most sophisticated federal agencies have found it difficult to effectively measure and evaluate the cyber risk of their contractor base. For example, the Navy recently released a report that highlighted growing concerns around supply chain cybersecurity, noting that the federal supply chain has been “compromised in ways and to an extent yet to be fully understood.” In a July 2019 report on the security of its contractors, the Defense Department Inspector General was blunt: The department “does not know the amount of DoD information managed by contractors and cannot determine whether contractors are protecting unclassified DoD information from unauthorized disclosure.”

In fact, data suggests that contractors are not meeting agency expectations for security. Recent BitSight research found that the average security performance rating across all federal agencies was at least 15 points higher than the mean security performance rating of any contractor sector. In other words, there is a significant security performance gap between federal agencies and their supply chain partners.

The time has come for agencies to prioritize this critical risk in their cybersecurity programs. There are steps agencies can take to more effectively measure, monitor and manage this challenge.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.nextgov.com/ideas/2019/08/how-manage-risk-along-federal-government-supply-chain/159401/

July 14, 2017 By AMK

How to improve DoD industry collaboration

For the past several years, the government has directed that innovation be made a key ingredient of acquisition. Industry has embraced this idea, and it has become a standard practice.

Many Department of Defense (DoD) suppliers have stood up innovation cells within their organization, whereas others have claimed that their entire organization is the innovation cell.

So what other practices can we embrace in order to improve acquisition? What should we be doing more of in order to develop and deliver quality products, on time, at an affordable price? One thing we can do is ensure we maximize collaboration between all stakeholders when developing new requirements, designing new products, or resolving issues on existing programs.

Keep reading this article from the July-August 2017 edition of Defense AT&L magazine at: https://www.dau.mil/library/defense-atl/_layouts/15/WopiFrame.aspx?sourcedoc=/library/defense-atl/DATLFiles/July-August_2017/Ogden.pdf

February 21, 2017 By AMK

After the award: How to make contracts deliver

In this article, the authors point out that collaboration, communication and trust characterize the best post-contract relationships.

Recently, the Professional Services Council’s Outcomes-Oriented Acquisition Working Group Chair Tim Cooke joined with me, IBM Center for the Business of Government Executive Director Dan Chenok, and the National Academy of Public Administration to convene a roundtable on post-award contract performance. It was the second on this subject (see here for a summary of first roundtable), and the first to include industry program managers.

As in the first session, senior agency procurement officials and contracting officer’s representatives (CORs) also participated. We are grateful to all who joined in this non-attribution session; their observations are insightful, as are their recommendations for the contracting, IT, and program management communities.

Our first roundtable focused on CORs and their role serving as the eyes and ears for program customers and contracting officers on post-award contract performance. This second gathering focused on the post-award relationship between the government and contractors.

Keep reading this article at: https://fcw.com/blogs/lectern/2017/02/kelman-post-award-roundtable.aspx

March 14, 2016 By AMK

White House would curb contracting waste with innovation labs

The Obama administration is rolling out a new weapon in the perennial battle against contract cost overruns and agencies taking delivery of instantly obsolete software.

Acquisition Innovation Labs, as announced last Wednesday by U.S. Chief Acquisition Officer Anne Rung, will “provide a pathway to test and implement more innovative approaches to acquisitions, with a strong emphasis on improving IT investments.”

Under the plan, each agency will appoint acquisition innovation advocates (AIAs) to promote testing of new ideas and better ways of executing existing practices in their agencies through managed risk-taking. Agencies will set up innovation labs “to promote meaningful collaboration through an integrated product team,” Rung said, and will participate in a new AIA Council to maximize collaboration across the government as well as share best practices and lessons learned.

Keep reading this article at: http://m.govexec.com/contracting/2016/03/white-house-would-curb-contracting-waste-innovation-labs/126578

We should all celebrate the recent passage and signing of the 2019 Bipartisan Budget Act that ended the federal budget impasse and did away with the destructive spending caps imposed by the 2011 Budget Control Act.

Even the most sophisticated federal agencies have found it difficult to effectively measure and evaluate the cyber risk of their contractor base.

For the past several years, the government has directed that innovation be made a key ingredient of acquisition. Industry has embraced this idea, and it has become a standard practice.

In this article, the authors point out that collaboration, communication and trust characterize the best post-contract relationships.

The Obama administration is rolling out a new weapon in the perennial battle against contract cost overruns and agencies taking delivery of instantly obsolete software.

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