OFPP | The Contracting Education Academy

July 26, 2018 By AMK

The rise of the microconsultants

One of the first — and even more than two decades later, still one of the most important — changes during the procurement reform era of the 1990s was the introduction of a “micropurchase” authority in the Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act of 1995.

In the background was the desire to allow program customers the ability to use a government credit card to make very small purchases directly, without the significant extra time (think of the purchase order request landing at the bottom of the contracting person’s in-box) and administrative cost that come with working through the contracting office.

An interesting backstory to this statutory change was the role of a young contract specialist at the Department of Health and Human Services named Michelle Craddock in helping develop the administration’s legislative proposal on this. Even before the 1995 law, the government could make purchases under $2,500 without going through a competition. Having just arrived in Washington in 1993 to become administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy, I was tasked with trying to find out if there were any statutory barriers to using a credit card for under-$2,500 purchases. On a learning tour of contracting offices to prepare me for my job as a Washington outsider awaiting Senate confirmation, Craddock was one of the contracting people I met in a visit set up by the HHS senior procurement executive.

Keep reading this article at: https://fcw.com/blogs/lectern/2018/07/kelman-microconsulting.aspx

May 31, 2018 By AMK

USDS to certify new acquisition specialty

The U.S. Digital Service is adding a digital services contracting certification to create a cadre of “technology acquisition mavericks.”

After two pilot efforts , USDS, along with the Office of Federal Procurement Policy, is launching a new certification program for digital services contracting for civilian agencies with an eye to reducing the cost and time it takes to procure digital services in government.

The idea for new program stemmed from a Challenge.gov winning submission, proposed by ICF International and ASI Government.

Government “didn’t teach how to buy digital services,” said Joanie Newhart, Associate Administrator for Acquisition Workforce Programs, Office of Federal Procurement Policy.

Keep reading this article at: https://fcw.com/articles/2018/05/23/usds-new-specialty.aspx

See the Office of Federal Procurement Policy’s memorandum May 18, 2018 on this subject at: https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/fac_c_digital_services_05_12_18.pdf

May 15, 2018 By AMK

New OFPP strategy targets 13 percent reduction of duplicative contracts by 2020

The Office of Federal Procurement Policy (OFPP) has been trying to solve contract duplication for almost a decade.

OFPP required agencies to justify new multiple award contracts by submitting business cases. That had limited success.

OFPP tried to create catalogs of existing contracts so agencies could see what was out there first before going down the path of a new contract. That had even less success.

Now OFPP is trying to use category management and its subcategory best-in-class contracts to shrink the number of technology, professional services, transportation and logistics and seven other categories where the number of MACs has grown and grown for decades.

Each category manager developed new strategies for 2018 with goals across four broad areas. Without a doubt, reducing contract duplication and ensuring small businesses aren’t left behind are going to be the hardest to achieve.

Keep reading this article at: https://federalnewsradio.com/reporters-notebook-jason-miller/2018/04/new-ofpp-strategy-targets-13-percent-reduction-of-duplicative-contracts-by-2020

April 26, 2018 By AMK

Recognizing the need for innovation in acquisition

The President’s Management Agenda lays out ambitious plans for the federal government to modernize information technology, prepare its future workforce and improve the way it manages major acquisitions.

These are among 14 cross-agency priority goals on which the administration is focused as it seeks to jettison outdated legacy systems and embrace less cumbersome ways of doing business.

Increasingly, federal IT managers are recognizing the need for innovation in acquisition, not just technology modernization. What exactly will it take to modernize an acquisition system bound by the 1,917-page Federal Acquisition Regulation? Federal acquisition experts say the challenges have less to do with changing those rules than with human behavior – the incentives, motivations and fears of people who touch federal acquisition – from the acquisition professionals themselves to mission owners and government executives and overseers.

“If you want a world-class acquisition system that is responsive to customer needs, you have to be able to use the right tool at the right time,” says Mathew Blum, associate administrator in the Office of Federal Procurement Policy at the Office of Management and Budget. The trouble isn’t a lack of options, he said at the American Council for Technology’s ACT/IAC Acquisition Excellence conference March 27. Rather he said, it is lack of bandwidth and fear of failure that conspire to keep acquisition pros from trying different acquisition strategies.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.govtechworks.com/risk2innovate/#gs.Xjt4eHI

March 26, 2018 By AMK

Riding the acquisition innovation avalanche

You know a transformation is afoot when the Navy chooses as its acquisition chief a man known as “Hondo,” who is famous for an Iron Man exoskeleton project and a “Thunderdrone” UAV tournament.

Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development and Acquisition James “Hondo” Geurts is the father of SOFWERX, the U.S. Special Forces Command’s technology incubator, where the super suit and the drone coliseum are housed. SOFWERX is dedicated to fomenting creative collisions among divergent thinkers, and Geurts is the personification of the most expansive explosion of innovative in federal acquisition in a quarter century.

As Geurts often says, we are in the Age of Surprise. Timelines are shorter. The technology gap between the United States and its adversaries is disappearing.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.govexec.com/excellence/promising-practices/2018/03/riding-acquisition-innovation-avalanche/146745/

One of the first — and even more than two decades later, still one of the most important — changes during the procurement reform era of the 1990s was the introduction of a “micropurchase” authority in the Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act of 1995.

The U.S. Digital Service is adding a digital services contracting certification to create a cadre of “technology acquisition mavericks.”

The Office of Federal Procurement Policy (OFPP) has been trying to solve contract duplication for almost a decade.

The President’s Management Agenda lays out ambitious plans for the federal government to modernize information technology, prepare its future workforce and improve the way it manages major acquisitions.

You know a transformation is afoot when the Navy chooses as its acquisition chief a man known as “Hondo,” who is famous for an Iron Man exoskeleton project and a “Thunderdrone” UAV tournament.

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