Congress | The Contracting Education Academy

April 24, 2019 By AMK

2019 NDAA analysis: A harder look at major defense acquisitions

This is the sixth blog post in a series analyzing the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) as signed into law on Aug. 13, 2018. Stay tuned for more blog posts covering additional topics in the near future from Holland & Knight’s Government Contracts Team.

With the 2019 NDAA, Congress has put teeth behind recommendations stemming from an independent study on sustainment planning in the Defense acquisition process. Reflecting congressional concern with the sustainment and total life-cycle costs of major defense acquisition programs, Section 844 of the 2017 NDAA had required the Secretary of Defense, through an agreement with an independent entity, to conduct a review of the extent to which sustainment matters are considered in decisions related to the requirements, research and development, acquisition, cost estimating, and programming and budgeting processes for major defense acquisition programs.

The 2019 NDAA directs the Secretary of Defense to “commence implementation of each recommendation submitted” as part of this independent assessment, or provide Congress with a “specific justification” for the delayed implementation or non-implementation of a recommendation. Where the Defense Secretary is opting not to implement one of these recommendations, he or she must provide “a summary of the alternative actions the Secretary plans to take to address the purposes underlying the recommendation.”

Keep reading this article at: http://www.mondaq.com/article.asp?articleid=795216

March 26, 2019 By cs

Reject Section 809 Panel’s acquisition reforms, federal workers urge Congress

Federal workers told Congress last week that defense acquisition reform proposals billed as cutting red tape for the Pentagon to buy trailblazing commercially available items would “result in large unnecessary costs,” and they are urging lawmakers to reject them.

The opposition by the American Federation of Government Employees, which counts 300,000 Pentagon employees in its ranks, to recommendations from the congressionally mandated Section 809 Panel means lawmakers will have multiple arguments to chew on as they decide which of the panel’s many reform proposals to include in the annual defense policy bill. The Section 809 Panel’s two-year effort yielded a 2,000-page report that was finalized in January.

AFGE’s national president, J. David Cox Sr., argued in a six-page letter to the House and Senate Armed Services committees dated March 15 that the panel’s proposed “dynamic marketplace framework” and other recommendations would line the pockets of defense contractors and only appear as well-reasoned reforms and streamlining of regulations.

“Nothing could be further from the truth,” Cox said in the letter. “This would, while increasing contracting profits, predictably decrease funds that otherwise could have been targeted toward compelling needs such as military readiness, support to our uniformed volunteers and their families, and the replacement of aging war-fighting equipment.”

Cox argued the panel hadn’t made the operational case for the proposal and that buying commercial might thwart the military’s interoperability goals and introduce more cyber vulnerabilities. He said the panel had been made up of former industry and procurement officials who were “biased solely to give expanding procurement opportunities to the private sector” and lacked representation from the “total force management communities.”

Keep reading this article at: https://www.defensenews.com/congress/2019/03/19/reject-defense-reforms-federal-workers-urge-congress

February 28, 2019 By cs

Expectations following the Section 809 Panel’s 3rd volume of acquisition policy reforms

The Section 809 Panel recently concluded its monumental analysis of defense acquisition law and regulations and released its third volume of recommended changes. The Panel’s work stands out from previous acquisition reform efforts with the appendices of detailed legislative and regulatory changes that accompany the commissioners’ analysis and recommendations.

Given the scope of the Panel’s work, few believe that Congress or the Department of Defense (DoD) will — or even could — simply adopt the recommendations in full. Legislative bandwidth for additional acquisition reform is finite, and some of the Panel’s recommendations will prompt robust debate. In this post, we analyze some of the recommendations that government contractors should follow most closely. We highlight key issues and address the political dynamics involved in enacting them.

Background

The Section 809 Panel, established by Congress in Section 809 of the FY2017 National Defense Authorization Act (“NDAA”) to address issues with Defense acquisition policies, recently released the third and final volume of its report. Volume III contains 58 recommendations for how to reform the way DoD purchases commercial products, manages acquisition programs, trains its acquisition workforce, adjudicates contract disputes, and communicates with industry, among other issues. On February 13, Covington and the National Defense Industrial Association convened and hosted an Industry Day, during which members of the Panel and leading acquisitions experts discussed the findings.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.insidegovernmentcontracts.com/2019/02/final-report-expectations-following-section-809-panels-third-volume-acquisition-policy-reforms/

February 18, 2019 By cs

Section 809 Panel issues summary report of 98 recommendations

Congress, through the 2016 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), established the Section 809 Panel to address fundamental problems with how the Defense Department acquires goods and services to support its warfighters.

Starting in 2008, whenever new legislation or regulation debuted that affected government contracting, it was written on a band-aid and stuck to a golf ball. The resulting softball-size set of rules was the focus of the Section 809 Panel.

The Section 809 Panel was charged with reviewing the acquisition regulations and statutes applicable to DoD with a view toward streamlining and improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the defense acquisition process.

Congress expected the Panel to make recommendations for the amendment or repeal of regulations and statutes. In May 2017, the Panel issued an interim report advocating in broad strokes for a host of improvements to the acquisition system to better streamline the process and increase industry offerings to the government. Next, in January 2018, the Panel issued the first it what would become a three volume report.

In the first volume, the Panel focused on developing what it called a new “dynamic marketplace framework” to respond to the Panel’s research which showed that the current acquisition process is an “obstacle to DoD’s ability to access a marketplace that has moved far beyond the traditional defense industrial base of the Cold War era.”

In its second volume, issued in June 2018, the Panel focused its attention on improving DoD’s existing “over-managed system” to more readily meet warfighter needs. The report identified improvements needed in the acquisition workforce, source selection, cost accounting, and contracting for services.

The third volume of analysis and recommendations was released last month (January 2019). It contained 58 recommendations (and associated sub-recommendations) which added to the 40 previous recommendations (and sub-recommendations) contained in volumes one and two.

The Panel’s latest work product was issued on February 14, 2019. It is a summary report that breaks-out all 98 recommendations into four categories:

Leverage the Dynamic Marketplace
Allocate Resources Effectively
Enable the Workforce
Simplify Acquisition

The Section 809 Panel’s summary report can be downloaded at: https://section809panel.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Sec809Panel_Roadmap_2019-02-14_web.pdf

February 10, 2019 By cs

Section 809 Panel’s work is far from done

After two years of work, the Section 809 Panel gathered in a hall at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce building on a cold, January day to present its third and final report, which summed up some 90 ways to improve the Defense Department’s acquisition system.

The commissioners spent the past 24 months interviewing past and current acquisition officials, think tank experts, consultants, industry leaders and organizations — including the National Defense Industrial Association — then talked amongst themselves to come up with some kind of consensus on recommendations.

Now what?

There have been many similar blue-ribbon panels in the past, all tasked with tackling the slow defense acquisition system. And this commission, like the others, had no authority to change anything.

What’s different now is a sense of urgency. The U.S. military feels the breath of China and Russia on its neck as they modernize their weapons and close technology gaps with the United States.

Everyone acknowledges the acquisition system is not serving the nation well.

It’s up to Congress to take the panel’s recommendations and make changes, hopefully ones that will have positive results.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2019/1/30/editors-notes-section-809-panels-work-is-far-from-done

This is the sixth blog post in a series analyzing the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) as signed into law on Aug. 13, 2018. Stay tuned for more blog posts covering additional topics in the near future from Holland & Knight’s Government Contracts Team.

Federal workers told Congress last week that defense acquisition reform proposals billed as cutting red tape for the Pentagon to buy trailblazing commercially available items would “result in large unnecessary costs,” and they are urging lawmakers to reject them.

Background

Congress, through the 2016 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), established the Section 809 Panel to address fundamental problems with how the Defense Department acquires goods and services to support its warfighters.

After two years of work, the Section 809 Panel gathered in a hall at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce building on a cold, January day to present its third and final report, which summed up some 90 ways to improve the Defense Department’s acquisition system.

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