Innovation | The Contracting Education Academy

March 21, 2019 By cs

In acquisition, standing still is the biggest risk

The biggest risk in federal acquisition today is not taking enough risks.

Not reckless risks, but deliberate risks consistent with Federal Acquisition Regulation Part 1 guidance.

The largest chunk of U.S. research and development spending, the most significant technological innovation, and its fastest evolution all reside in the private sector. And the private sector has little interest in slogging through the rule-burdened, prescriptive, intellectual-property-devouring federal procurement process. These facts are driving a tidal wave of change in government buying, especially in Defense organizations.

Here’s the January 2018 National Defense Strategy:

“We must not accept cumbersome approval chains, wasteful applications of resources in uncompetitive space, or overly risk-averse thinking that impedes change. Delivering performance means we will shed outdated management practices and structures while integrating insights from business innovation.”

Not only is the Pentagon challenged in attracting the most innovative companies in America’s most vibrant business sectors, but our adversaries—like Russia and China—have little acquisition oversight or regulation so they are beating us to the cutting edge.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.govexec.com/excellence/promising-practices/2019/03/acquisition-standing-still-biggest-risk/155397

March 20, 2019 By cs

Creating space for innovation

“Innovation” is an overused buzzword that obscures the messy reality of making change happen.

True innovation requires the right people, the proper mix of technologies and a critical grasp of customers’ needs and expectations. For agencies, the many layers of federal governance and regulation add another degree of difficulty.

FCW recently gathered a group of IT leaders from across government to talk about the obstacles they’re encountering and how they’ve addressed them. The discussion was on the record but not for individual attribution, and the quotes have been edited for length and clarity. Here’s what the group had to say.

Procurement is no longer the obstacle — security is

The Federal Acquisition Regulation’s restrictions, both real and perceived, have long been a friction point for digital reinvention efforts, but most participants said the contracting process is not holding them back.

“It used to be the in-vogue complaint was, ‘Oh, it’s all procurement’s fault,'” one executive said. “But actually, procurement has gotten much better. What our agency is grappling with is the IT monstrosity that came out of” the Federal Information Security Management Act.

“FISMA came out because we were doing these things wrong in government,” he acknowledged. “But now we’ve created this very burdensome process that is not well-aligned to where cloud architecture is going,” and agencies must find new ways to navigate that process. “Obviously, we can’t bend security principles, [but without a new architecture,] you’re waiting two years to deploy. That’s not innovation. That’s not acceptable in this day and age.”

Keep reading this article at: https://fcw.com/articles/2019/02/21/fcw-perspectives-innovation.aspx

March 15, 2019 By cs

Six futuristic concepts on the Pentagon’s counterterrorism “wish list”

A Department of Defense (DoD) branch that “identifies and develops capabilities to combat terrorism and irregular adversaries” is looking for big ideas.

According to a solicitation issued earlier this year, DoD’s Combating Terrorism Technical Support Office (CTTSO) wants scientists and researchers to deliver, among other things, adhesive skin patches that double as alarms; color night vision; armed underwater drones; long-range facial recognition; and a device that can locate and identify human targets through solid walls.

CTTSO’s request represents a “wish list” of sorts, says Paul Rosenzweig, a former deputy assistant secretary for policy at the Department of Homeland Security who has written extensively about counterterrorism.

Now a senior fellow at the R Street Institute, a conservative-leaning Washington, DC think tank, Rosenzweig thinks some of what CTTSO hopes to achieve is likely doable, and reasonably quickly. Certain concepts, however, will probably remain just slightly out of reach, at least in the near-term, Rosenzweig tells Quartz.

Keep reading this article at: https://qz.com/1565598/6-things-on-the-pentagons-counterterrorism-technology-wishlist/

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