flexibility | The Contracting Education Academy

August 23, 2019 By cs

The Pentagon embraced flexibility to up its acquisition workforce

The expansive list of federal hiring authorities has seen mixed responses from agency human resource offices, with some saying that options help them to fill critical positions, while others say that the increasing number and complexity of hiring authorities does more damage than good.

But according to the Government Accountability Office, the Department of Defense has had success over the past five years in using such authorities to expand their substantial civilian acquisition workforce.

“The Department of Defense has used human capital flexibilities extensively to hire, recruit and retain its civilian acquisition workforce. Since 2014, usage rates for hiring flexibilities — alternatives to the traditional, competitive hiring process — have generally increased,” an Aug. 15 report said.

“DoD leadership has encouraged its hiring personnel to use these flexibilities, such as direct hire authorities, to reduce the length of the hiring process. From fiscal year 2014 to 2018, DoD used hiring flexibilities for 90 percent of its approximately 44,000 civilian acquisition workforce hiring actions.”

According to data collected by the DoD’s Human Capital Initiative, the civilian acquisition workforce increased by nearly 17 percent over that period, going from 134,808 employees in 2014 to 157,318 in 2018.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.federaltimes.com/management/hr/2019/08/15/the-pentagon-embraced-flexibility-to-up-its-acquisition-workforce

May 16, 2019 By AMK

Two changes Congress can make to speed space acquisition

We now live in a world of accelerated technological advancement. Moore’s Law has come home to roost in the space business. Taking seven to 10 years to develop and deploy operational space systems is no longer efficient nor acceptable.

Recently, as pointed out by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, America’s adversaries have been turning technology in three to four years, while the U.S. is turning technology in seven to 10 years. For the last 25 years, we have been the unchallenged world leaders in space technology. However, if this trend continues it will not be very long until we fall behind. This has been recognized by the GAO and congressional and Air Force leadership. To respond, we must figure out how to move fast, insert technology quickly and respond to rapid technology insertion by our adversaries. Therefore, we need to increase our risk tolerance, and build systems faster and more affordably, allowing us to deploy resilient constellations that can endure losses, and still provide mission capability. To retain system agility and resilience, we cannot afford to buy and field technologically “old” systems up to a decade after program initiation.

In the past, we deployed systems very quickly. The first Defense Meteorological Satellite Program satellite was built in 10 months, but we did this with a high tolerance for risk. While we were risk tolerant, Gen. Bernard Schriever and the early military space pioneers realized that problems in high-technology, low-volume developments would occur, and therefore built in cost and schedule margin. This margin allowed rapid and efficient addressing of problems and issues as soon as they occurred.

Keep reading article at: https://spacenews.com/op-ed-two-changes-congress-can-make-to-speed-space-acquisition/

April 5, 2019 By AMK

Other transactions: Do the rewards outweigh the risks?

In recent years, the federal government has made a large shift in how it expends taxpayer dollars on federal contracts. Numerous laws have mandated new or expanded use of rapid procurement processes or other transaction agreements (OTA), which are now a preferred procurement vehicle.

OTAs, while not contracts governed by the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR), are legally binding contracts that were once considered tools of last resort because they put taxpayers and the government at risk.

The theory behind OTAs is that nontraditional vendors would be lured into the government contracting marketplace by streamlined procurement processes. The hope is that nontraditional contractors that were unable or unwilling to enter into traditional procurement contracts would come to the table and bring with them innovative solutions that traditional contractors were not offering. The reality, however, is that these speedy buying procedures are being leveraged by large traditional contractors that are looking to boost their bottom line by avoiding normal contract administration, oversight, and accountability protections.

“Other transactions” is a term commonly used to refer to the authority to enter into transactions other than contracts, grants, or cooperative agreements. Agencies have authority to award such agreements in limited circumstances — research, prototype, and now defense follow-on production projects. Unlike a normal government contract, OTA is promoted as a more flexible agreement that can speed up the buying process and be better tailored based on changes in technology and the government’s needs.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.pogo.org/report/2019/03/other-transactions-do-the-rewards-outweigh-the-risks/

July 13, 2018 By AMK

Other transaction authority: Protests and disputes

Ready or not — Federal agencies are increasingly utilizing Other Transaction Authority (OTA) to craft agreements that are not subject to traditional procurement laws and therefore should, in theory, allow the Government greater access to innovative solutions.

While the goal of OTA procedures may be to avoid bottlenecks inherent in procurement under the Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR), in the end they may result in valuable contracts with the government. As with any such contracts, it is inevitable that disputes will arise during their formation and administration.

While there is very little precedent relating to protests of OTA awards or claims arising under OTA-awarded contracts, there are some fundamental principles and analogous decisions that suggest how this early history of OTA protests and claims may unfold. This article attempts to portray the current landscape for protests of OTA awards and contract claims arising during performance of an OTA agreement.

But, first, a bit of context.

Executive agencies derive authority to enter into traditional procurement contracts, grants, and cooperative agreements from Congress. “OTA” is a rubric describing a set of statutes that explicitly grant certain agencies the authority to enter into agreements other than procurement contracts, grants, and cooperative agreements. Over the past roughly 60 years, Congress has granted varying degrees of OTA to various agencies, including NASA and the Department of Defense (DoD).

In theory, freedom from the burdens of traditional procurement laws and procedures should allow agencies to craft creative, customized agreements without the requirements and compliance burdens that can scare groundbreaking commercial companies away from the government contracting market. Of great interest to commercial companies, OTA awards are exempt from the Bayh-Dole Act and its associated patent and data rights regulations, allowing parties to an OTA agreement great flexibility in negotiating protection of intellectual property rights. As innovation is increasingly driven in the commercial sector by companies that are not reliant on federal funding, agencies are turning to OTA in order to attract companies that would not otherwise consider pursuing a traditional procurement opportunity.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.mondaq.com/article.asp?articleid=716090

June 1, 2018 By AMK

Agencies need to take more risks in acquisition

The recently released president’s management agenda states that efforts to transform government through major acquisitions are hamstrung by processes that “remain captive to a risk-averse culture that rewards compliance over creativity.”

No wonder. The Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) contains a mind-numbing 1,917 pages of policies and procedures that government acquisition officials must follow when buying goods and services. Navigating these rules can be daunting for contracting officers, who often live in fear of something going wrong.

But even within the constraints, there is room for flexibility—approaches that deviate from the norm but hold potential to achieve better quality and innovative outcomes while preserving competition, transparency and accountability.

Following a path toward innovation requires overcoming the fear of failure and the willingness to take risks within reasonable bounds.

For example, improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, have been a major cause of injury and death in the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq since the United States put its personnel on the ground. Enemy combatants can remotely detonate IEDs using cell phones or other electronic devices.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.govexec.com/excellence/promising-practices/2018/05/agencies-need-take-more-risks-acquisition/148433/

The expansive list of federal hiring authorities has seen mixed responses from agency human resource offices, with some saying that options help them to fill critical positions, while others say that the increasing number and complexity of hiring authorities does more damage than good.

We now live in a world of accelerated technological advancement. Moore’s Law has come home to roost in the space business. Taking seven to 10 years to develop and deploy operational space systems is no longer efficient nor acceptable.

In recent years, the federal government has made a large shift in how it expends taxpayer dollars on federal contracts. Numerous laws have mandated new or expanded use of rapid procurement processes or other transaction agreements (OTA), which are now a preferred procurement vehicle.

Ready or not — Federal agencies are increasingly utilizing Other Transaction Authority (OTA) to craft agreements that are not subject to traditional procurement laws and therefore should, in theory, allow the Government greater access to innovative solutions.

The recently released president’s management agenda states that efforts to transform government through major acquisitions are hamstrung by processes that “remain captive to a risk-averse culture that rewards compliance over creativity.”

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