NDIA | The Contracting Education Academy

February 27, 2020 By cs

New NDIA study gives defense industrial base health a ‘C’ grade

A new battery of tests that aims to assess the overall health of the defense industrial base over time reported a barely-passing “C” grade in the inaugural edition, issued earlier this month.

The report card — dubbed “Vital Signs” by analysts at the National Defense Industrial Association and Govini — is partly a follow-on response to a first-of-its-kind report the Pentagon issued in 2018. That assessment showed some worrisome signs about the defense industry, but was a snapshot in time. NDIA officials said policymakers need a more repeatable deep-dive to understand the key problems on an ongoing basis.

From a Wall Street perspective, the industry is in very good shape. Publicly-traded companies in the sector are profitable, and have historically-high amounts of cash on hand even though they’re spending heavily on new plants and equipment. On a scale of 0 to 100, the NDIA report scores those measures — collectively called “competition” — at 96.

But that category is only one of eight in the report, and the picture is less rosy in many of the others.

Keep reading this article at: https://federalnewsnetwork.com/defense-main/2020/02/new-ndia-study-gives-defense-industrial-base-health-a-c-grade/

March 26, 2019 By AMK

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 AMK

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 7, 2019 By AMK

DoD procurement overhaul report recommendations draw both praise, critique from industry groups

The most important recommendation to come out of the third Section 809 Panel report on defense procurement reform is one that doesn’t directly relate to procurement, according to a leading industry group.

Corbin Evans, director of regulatory policy for the National Defense Industrial Association, told WashingtonExec the most crucial recommendation is for Congress to enact timely regular appropriations bills instead of continuing resolutions. Otherwise, defense acquisition will continue to suffer, regardless of what other reforms are made.

“This has been an NDIA priority for years,” he said. “It’s important to ensure that these bills are done on time and that money can be distributed in a predictable manner.”

Evans also singled out the panel’s recommendation to enable enhanced use of advanced payments at the time of contract awards to small businesses, which comprise about 75 percent of NDIA’s 1,700 members.

Keep reading this article at: https://washingtonexec.com/2019/01/section-809-report-dod-acquisition-reform/

August 12, 2014 By AMK

Recommendations for DoD acquisition reform focus on 7 areas

The Defense Department added its voice to a growing list of associations and lawmakers with ideas on how to improve the military’s acquisition process.

DoD’s ideas center less on what Congress can do and more on what it shouldn’t do.

Frank Kendall, the undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, sent a letter to Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Carl Levin (D-Mich.) back in June detailing seven areas where he thinks DoD needs help to improve acquisition outcomes.

For the first time publicly today at the AFCEA Acquisition Modernization conference in Washington, Kendall highlighted his seven recommendations.

Kendall said the biggest thing Congress could do is end the threat of sequestration in 2016 and beyond.

“2013 was a nightmare year. We actually implemented sequestration well into the year. We bought ourselves a little time with the deal that got us through 2014 and presumably through 2015. It’s coming right back in 2016,” he said. “We are working on the budget right now. The services are finalizing their [budget plans], and we will go through an exercise this fall where we will have to look at what the President will submit and something that is compliant with sequestration to see what the damage is. The damage is huge.”

Keep reading this article at: http://www.federalnewsradio.com/394/3676550/Kendall-shapes-DoD-acquisition-reforms-around-7-areas-

A new battery of tests that aims to assess the overall health of the defense industrial base over time reported a barely-passing “C” grade in the inaugural edition, issued earlier this month.

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

The most important recommendation to come out of the third Section 809 Panel report on defense procurement reform is one that doesn’t directly relate to procurement, according to a leading industry group.

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