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February 21, 2020 By cs

Army joins forces with GSA to get federal agencies to share solutions to similar strategic acquisition challenges

Over the past year, within both government and industry, there has been a great deal of buzz surrounding new and emerging technologies that have the power to speed up business processes and give valuable time back to professional workforces.

Key benefits include, in addition to streamlined processes, improved data transparency, security and accuracy; reduction in workforce time spent on administrative tasks; fewer administrative errors and a resulting increase in compliance; lower operating costs; and quicker access to accurate, timely information.

In fiscal year 2019, Stuart Hazlett, deputy assistant secretary of the Army for procurement (DASA(P)) reorganized the Office of the DASA(P) (ODASA (P)), into several reform initiative teams to better support top Army and DOD priorities—lethality, readiness and modernization. The charter of one of those initiatives, Acquisition Innovation through Technology, explores new and emerging technology capabilities that will shift focus from lower-value administrative work to higher-value work requiring critical thinking that will help contracting professionals save time and make better-informed decisions.

In support of the Acquisition Innovation through Technology mission, Becky Weirick, executive services director of ODASA(P), partnered with the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) and brought together DOD and federal government leaders on Aug. 15 to collaborate and discuss current technology innovations in acquisition. GSA’s mission—to improve the way that federal agencies buy, build and use technology—dovetailed perfectly with Weirick’s vision. Weirick was seeking to bring acquisition and technical experts together from across the federal government to look for ways to drive innovation through technology in business processes and to leverage each other’s tools, strategies and best practices.

Many federal agencies face similar acquisition challenges, such as various procurement systems producing unstructured data, and require similar solutions. Instead of operating in stovepipes, Weirick wanted to bring agencies together at the inception of deploying new and emerging technologies in acquisition. This inclusive, collaborative vision enables federal agencies to leverage each other’s resources and to communicate more effectively.

Elizabeth Chirico, ODASA(P) acquisition innovation lead, along with Jannine Wilkinson and John Burchill, GSA’s Army national account managers, coordinated and facilitated the meeting at GSA headquarters in Washington, providing a forum for sharing acquisition technology ideas, progress and resources. (Chirico and Burchill are co-authors of this article; see their bios and more information at the end of this article.) Federal government leaders from a variety of technical backgrounds participated, including data scientists, acquisition policy chiefs, senior procurement executives, contracting chiefs, chief technology officers, chief information officers and resource management leads. Several federal agencies, including the Internal Revenue Service, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Defense Logistics Agency and GSA, are exploring and piloting a variety of technologies in the acquisition process, including robotic process automation, to improve acquisition business processes. Group members discussed current and future initiatives designed to enhance and streamline the acquisition process by reducing redundancy, saving time and taxpayer dollars, eliminating administrative tasks from the contracting process and freeing up valuable contracting resources to perform critical analysis.

MODERNIZATION THROUGH COLLABORATION

If technology enables us to deliver capability faster, collaboration allows us to increase our collective impact. DASA(P) leadership, in conjunction with GSA, led the charge to partner across federal agencies to leverage technology solutions that one or two agencies individually piloted in order to exponentially increase our collective impact to every federal workforce member. Since robotic process automation is a fairly mature technology, it is particularly interesting to the Army and other members of the group.

Robotic process automation has the power to easily automate straightforward, repeatable processes traditionally executed by a human and ultimately to streamline processes, increase compliance and save time and resources. Robotic automation solutions may differ slightly, but since each federal agency shares key common denominators—the use of the same or similar acquisition systems and processes—the success of one pilot or proof of concept sends ripples across the entire federal space and enables all to accelerate change.

SHIFTING THE CULTURE

One of the most challenging parts of introducing new technology is combating a resistance to change in the workplace. Often, professionals are skeptical of how new technology processes work, or whether they really will produce accurate results and ultimately be helpful. Sometimes, professionals even see the benefit of a new technology or process but are still resistant to using it, because it is outside of their normal process and feels unfamiliar to them. Often, the best way to prove to professionals that a technology like robotic process automation really works is to make sure that they are actively involved in the change process.

A pilot or proof-of-concept of the new technology allows the workforce to see firsthand how the technology works. The true benefit of a pilot program is to allow the technology’s capability to speak for itself. That way, the workforce has the opportunity to experience how the technology saves them time and improves accuracy. Once the technology demonstrates value—even if just in a few targeted locations—word will spread about the benefits, and then others will clamor to adopt the technology, too. As with all things, adapting to even small or incremental changes takes time.

Two civilian agencies have individually piloted similar “contractor responsibility determination” solutions using robotic process automation. This robotic process automation—or “bot” for short—is able to pull information from public websites such as the System for Award Management (SAM) and the Federal Awardee Performance and Integrity Information System (FAPIIS) just like a human would—except much faster.

In order for a bot to work effectively, a bot technician simply enters, or records, the exact process that a contracting professional would ordinarily take, right down to mouse clicks, typing of data, screenshots and pulling of reports. In this case, the process entails navigating to the SAM.gov and FAPIIS.gov websites, typing in a unique vendor number, also known as a Data Universal Numbering System (DUNS) number, and checking each website’s database for results and information indicating whether the contractor is registered in each system in order to do business with the federal government, does not have any active exclusions (such as suspension or debarment) and is otherwise capable of receiving a federal contract award.

To launch this process with the bot, a contracting professional provides the bot with a DUNS number for each contractor (via email or other electronic means), then the bot takes over the task from there: It enters each DUNS number into both the SAM and FAPIIS websites, creates screenshot reports from the information listed in the sites, populates a document with the results for each vendor that it finds, and sends the results to a contracting specialist—in no more than four minutes.

In September, the Army awarded a contract to procure a “contractor responsibility determination” bot to enable contracting professionals to shift their focus from low-value administrative tasks like checking SAM.gov for a given contractor’s registration, to high-value, critical-thinking areas of their work such as negotiations and cost analysis. Once the Army demonstrates success of the bot, it plans to extend use of it to other DoD and federal agencies. That way, multiple federal agencies will have the opportunity to leverage and share in the Army’s success of a streamlined process. Federal agencies are banding together to divide and conquer other aspects of acquisition ripe for automation, such as searching government systems for contractors’ past performance information, or auto-populating required Federal Acquisition Regulation clauses for specific types of requirements.

SAVE THE SPECIALISTS AND DELIVER CAPABILITY 

Contract specialists and contracting officers often manage critical and diverse portfolios of contract requirements for various customers, stakeholders and requiring activities. Usually, each requiring activity and stakeholder views the contracting aspect of the acquisition process as the final speed bump to delivering capability or completing the mission. Delivering capability in the Army means delivering lethality and readiness to our Soldiers.

Most contracting professionals are used to an urgent, high-tempo work environment. Robotic process automation has the power to dramatically cut time and reduce unnecessary stress in an often cumbersome acquisition process. In this case, robotic process automation enables contracting professionals to be more productive with their time by allowing them to use their critical-thinking skills on complex cost analysis for procuring weapon systems or conducting multifaceted negotiations, rather than spending time waiting for multiple websites to load or re-entering the same information into several forms or systems.

For example, it usually takes a contracting professional up to an hour to complete a contractor responsibility determination process. This tedious task is a required part of the acquisition process that a contracting professional must complete multiple times throughout the course of awarding a new contract. This check is required during three stages of an acquisition:

  1. The market research stage: When the acquisition team is looking for contractors that will be able to perform the type of work that they are looking for.
  2. The competitive range stage: Once the team requests and receives contractors’ proposals, in order to determine if the top contractors, or “competitive range,” that submitted proposals are capable of receiving a federal award.
  3. At the time of final award: To make sure that the selected contractor is still capable of receiving an award from the federal government (no suspensions, debarments or violations of federal law have taken place since the last check).

As you can imagine, over the course of a year, contracting professionals perform many responsibility determination checks. A DASA(P) internal report showed that on average, the Army issues approximately 250,000 contract actions per year, requiring contracting professionals to determine whether a contractor is responsible in each stage of the action. Based on initial estimates, using an Army bot in the contractor responsibility determination process will save up to 13 days of time annually for each contracting professional (over 7,000 total) across the Army. Thirteen days saved per contracting professional would drastically help to reduce procurement administrative lead time across the board for all acquisitions, just by speeding up one small administrative task. Imagine if we applied robotic process automation solutions to other areas of the acquisition process: We could deliver capability to our Soldiers much faster.

CONCLUSION

DASA(P) led the charge in acquisition modernization efforts by strategically collaborating with other federal agencies using technology enablers in the acquisition arena, piloting a contractor responsibility determination bot across the Army contracting enterprise, and by extending the bot capability and success of the pilot to other DoD and federal agencies to use.

By leveraging these new and emerging technologies, we can drive productivity, increase quality and save time—and everyone wants the ability to work more efficiently. Every generation of new technology enables new business processes, often improving quality of life in ways once unimaginable. Automation in acquisition is no different. Leveraging emerging technology and innovation within the federal space aligns with the President’s Management Agenda as well as the National Defense Strategy. Both documents highlight the critical need for government agencies and DOD to enhance mission effectiveness through the modernization of systems, processes and capabilities.

Federal acquisition leaders should continue to coordinate and collaborate, sharing successes and thinking of creative ways to use rapidly evolving technology to streamline acquisition and business processes. Together, we can change the shape of acquisition by employing technology to better enable the federal workforce to deliver capability more efficiently and effectively.


For more information, go to the Office of the DASA(P) website: https://spcs3.kc.army.mil/asaalt/procurement/SitePages/PAMHome.

About the Authors:

ELIZABETH CHIRICO is the acquisition innovation lead in the ODASA(P). She holds an M.S. in acquisition and contract management from the Florida Institute of Technology and a B.A. in English from the University of Mary Washington. She is Level III certified in contracting and is a member of the Army Acquisition Corps.

JOHN BURCHILL is the Army national account manager at the GSA. He holds an MBA from Binghamton University and a B.S. in marketing and management from Ithaca College. He has Level II Federal Acquisition Certification for Contracting Officer’s Representatives, an ITIL Foundations Certification and a master’s certificate in federal project management.

This article is published in the Winter 2020 issue of Army AL&T magazine and can be seen here: https://www.dvidshub.net/news/359081/innovation-through-technology

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: acquisition planning, acquisition reform, acquisition workforce, AI, Army, automation, bots, collaboration, contract planning, DASA(P), FAPIIS, GSA, innovation, procurement reform, proof-of-concept, SAM, technology

November 18, 2019 By cs

The Pentagon’s climate problem

The defense acquisition community faces a climate problem — a political climate of suspicion is impeding the Pentagon’s efforts to take advantage of private industry expertise to deliver important capabilities to America’s warfighters.

Secretary of Defense Mark Esper called out the delegitimizing and debilitating nature of the climate of suspicion when, during his confirmation hearing, he observed: “I think the presumption is, for some reason, anybody who comes from the business or the corporate world is corrupt.” This phenomenon contributes to unnecessary delays to critical contract awards, discourages recruitment of leaders with industry experience, and deters strategic collaboration with industry partners.

Government faces a growing need for access to technologies at the frontier of innovation, requiring greater reliance on engagement with private sector innovators to deliver these tools. Although legitimate concerns about conflicts of interest should always receive fair hearing, when taken to extremes, they become detrimental to sound national security policy.

The controversy over the awarding of the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, or JEDI, contract illustrates how the current climate of suspicion can undermine national defense programs. The JEDI cloud will act as a centralized cloud computing service for all of the Defense Department’s unclassified, classified and top-secret information. The contract will offer its eventual awardee revenue of up to $10 billion over 10 years. With such a lucrative deal up for grabs, the award process has become contentious, including allegations of bias in the award decision. Most prominently, Oracle Corp. filed a lawsuit against the department claiming that conflicts of interest by recently hired Pentagon procurement personnel previously employed by Amazon Web Services — the widely speculated favorite to win the JEDI contract award — prejudicially affected the procurement.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2019/11/5/the-pentagons-climate-problem

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: collaboration, conflict of interest, DoD, innovation, JEDI, leadership, national security, Pentagon, prejudice, source selection, suspicion

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

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: budget, collaboration, Congress, DoD, government shutdown, industry feedback, sequestration, shutdown

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/

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: collaboration, controlled unclassified information, cybersecurity, DoD, monitoring, Navy, sensitive data, supply chain, supply chain management, vulnerability

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

 

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: AT&L, collaboration, DAU, DoD, industrial base, industry feedback, innovation, market research, requirements definition

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