GSA | The Contracting Education Academy

September 18, 2020 By cs

Pentagon’s central AI office wants to standardize its acquisition process

The Pentagon’s top artificial intelligence office released a request for information Aug. 28 outlining interest in establishing a new acquisition approach for standardizing the development and procurement process for AI tools.

According to the solicitation, the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center is “considering” starting a competition for a 501(c) nonprofit manager or managers of its prototype “Artificial Intelligence Acquisition Business Model” that looks to use other transaction authorities to more quickly purchase AI products.

The JAIC’s prototype business model could deliver “AI capabilities through meaningful market research/front-end collaboration and optimal teaming arrangements of both traditional and non-traditional companies for AI product procurement,” the RFI said. If the plan moves forward, the JAIC would also “explore the possibilities of using the model to enable agile AI acquisition processes to the DoD at scale.”

The JAIC is the Defense Department’s main hub for artificial intelligence and is responsible for increasing adoption of AI across the department. It works with the services and combatant commands to develop AI tools that have practical use.

To meet the military’s needs, the JAIC uses the traditional government contracting process, known as Federal Acquisition Regulation-based contracts, and works with the General Services Administration, the Defense Information Systems Agency and the Defense Innovation Unit. The traditional acquisition strategy currently being used is unlikely sufficient enough to help the JAIC carry out its mission, the RFI stated.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.c4isrnet.com/artificial-intelligence/2020/09/01/pentagons-central-ai-office-wants-to-standardize-its-acquisition-process/

September 17, 2020 By cs

GSA finally pushing price competition to where it belongs: At the task order level

Emily Murphy, the General Services Administration’s administrator, uttered her “famous” words during her nomination hearing before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee in October 2017: “We are trying to make sure GSA’s contracting officers and our policies support really vigorous competition at the task order level because that is the amount we actually are going to spend so we want to get the best deal there, the most competition we can there.”

She offered experience, understanding and hope where only previous administrators’ words offered hallowed general concepts before.

If anyone understood the ridiculousness of asking a vendor’s price for something they haven’t seen the requirements for, it was Murphy.

And when Congress blessed the concept of creating an “unpriced multiple award contract” where costs only mattered at each individual task order level in the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act, many in the acquisition community — including myself — thought the clarion call finally has been heard.

Keep reading this article at: https://federalnewsnetwork.com/reporters-notebook-jason-miller/2020/08/gsa-finally-pushing-price-competition-to-where-it-belongs-at-the-task-order-level/

September 11, 2020 By cs

IRS offering up to $7 million to develop ‘data mashing’ tools in support of frictionless acquisition

Using its experimental multiphase Pilot IRS contract vehicle, the agency issued a quickturn solicitation to improve data collection for a governmentwide effort to improve procurement.

The IRS is using its relatively new, quickturn procurement vehicle — Pilot IRS — to support a governmentwide data collection effort in support of fixing pain points in the government’s acquisition process.

This summer, the Office of Management and Budget rolled out a new cross-agency priority, or CAP, goal entitled “Frictionless Acquisition,” with the aim of delivering “commercial items at the same speed as the market place and manage customers’ delivery expectations for acquisitions of non-commercial items by breaking down barriers to entry using modern business practices and technologies,” according to the goal statement on Performance.gov.

Part of that goal includes improving information collected about federal procurements and the ways that data is standardized and combined to gain insights — also known as “data mashing.”

IRS procurement officials were tapped to figure out how best to accomplish this task with regard to prices for goods and services and issued a request for proposals this week using its experimental contracting vehicle.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.nextgov.com/cio-briefing/2020/09/irs-offering-7m-develop-data-mashing-tools-support-frictionless-acquisition/168252/

September 3, 2020 By cs

Agencies achieving frictionless acquisition in variety of ways

Years of criticism directed at federal agencies has created a culture of risk aversion. That’s something which Soraya Correa, Department of Homeland Security chief procurement officer, said needs to change.

“We’ve got to allow people to do things differently, to try new [things], and so take those chances,” she said Tuesday. “And we the leadership in this profession and across all the professions need to support our people a little bit better to make them feel that confidence that they can take some calculated risks and move the ball forward.”

Correa was part of the Accelerating Acquisition in the Dynamic Workplace webinar, sponsored by FedInsider, which gathered agency acquisition leaders to talk about inefficiencies in federal procurement and what they would like to be done differently.

One of Correa’s initiatives, DHS’ Procurement Innovation Lab, has set an example of creating “safe spaces” for innovation. Its PIL boot camp has proved popular with other agencies and DHS and its components have awarded a cumulative 52 PIL procurement projects from fiscal 2015, when the lab started, to 2019, according to the agency.

Several speakers referenced the Contractor Performance Assessment Reporting Systems (CPARS), an electronic workflow that reports and rates contractor performance, at the General Services Administration. Correa said DHS is championing artificial intelligence to track past performance with CPARS data, but the system is “daunting.”

Keep reading this article at: https://federalnewsnetwork.com/acquisition/2020/08/agencies-achieving-frictionless-acquisition-in-variety-of-ways/

September 1, 2020 By cs

GSA imagines new small business GWAC

The General Services Administration gave the public a look at its next step in developing the agency’s new small business governmentwide contracting (GWAC) vehicle that will eventually replace the canceled Alliant 2 Small Business contract.

The new vehicle will emphasize Historically Underutilized Business Zone (HUBZone) and woman-owned small business set-asides, streamlined pricing and contract submission processes, as well as a source for emerging artificial intelligence, machine learning, as-a-service offerings, cloud and edge computing technologies, as well as cybersecurity technology, according to GSA officials.

In an Aug. 27 webcast, GSA small business and IT category officials gave a loose outline of how they see the agency’s next-generation small business contract will develop in the coming months. They asked for industry input on how to maximize technologies, processes and ease-of-use for the new GWAC.

The agency anticipates issuing a draft solicitation “by the end of the year,” said Lee Tittle, program lead for small business GWACs in GSA’s Office of IT Category (OITC). To accommodate industry input and disseminate information on the effort, GSA opened a new category on its Interact online community.

Keep reading this article at: https://fcw.com/articles/2020/08/27/rockwell-gsa-new-gwac-smal-biz.aspx

The Pentagon’s top artificial intelligence office released a request for information Aug. 28 outlining interest in establishing a new acquisition approach for standardizing the development and procurement process for AI tools.

Using its experimental multiphase Pilot IRS contract vehicle, the agency issued a quickturn solicitation to improve data collection for a governmentwide effort to improve procurement.

Years of criticism directed at federal agencies has created a culture of risk aversion. That’s something which Soraya Correa, Department of Homeland Security chief procurement officer, said needs to change.

The General Services Administration gave the public a look at its next step in developing the agency’s new small business governmentwide contracting (GWAC) vehicle that will eventually replace the canceled Alliant 2 Small Business contract.

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