OTA | The Contracting Education Academy

July 25, 2019 By AMK

Audit: Pentagon acquisition reform requires more leadership attention

The Defense Department has made progress implementing acquisition reforms in recent years, but leadership needs to pay more attention for meaningful change to take place, according to an audit released this week by the Government Accountability Office.

The audit was completed at the request of the House and Senate Armed Services committees, which sought to determine whether and how the Pentagon was handling numerous acquisition reforms included in the 2017 and 2018 National Defense Authorization Acts.

The answers are a mixed bag, according to GAO auditors.

On one hand, military departments have taken on a larger share of the decision-making authority for major multibillion-dollar, multiyear defense acquisitions since 2016. That year, the Office of the Secretary of Defense oversaw 30 major defense acquisition programs, compared to 58 overseen by military departments. As of March, OSD only oversaw nine major defense acquisition programs, while military departments oversaw 80.

OSD oversees only those programs that are high-risk, joint or had significant cost or schedule growth, like the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program or the Army’s Integrated Air and Missile Defense program.

Keep reading article at: https://www.nextgov.com/policy/2019/06/audit-pentagon-acquisition-reform-requires-more-leadership-attention/157548/

July 17, 2019 By AMK

Pentagon aims to expedite security clearance process with $75 million award

Perspecta Enterprise Solutions LLC won a $75 million other transaction agreement on May 14 to continue modernization of the federal security clearance process, in particular with machine learning and related technology.

The Defense Security Service and Defense Information Systems Agency awarded the 24-month OTA, which covers improvements to National Background Investigation Services information technology.

Perspecta will help DSS — which will eventually be renamed the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency — expedite background investigations, adjudications, continuous vetting and insider-threat programs by creating a Security Enterprise Architecture and Data Services prototype.

When a new employee or transfer needs clearance, the prototype will use machine learning and natural language processing to pull from disparate data sources to fill out form information. Previously a full investigative package was prepared manually and handed over for adjudication.

Keep reading article at: https://www.fedscoop.com/security-clearances-perspecta-enterprise-solutions-ota/

July 11, 2019 By AMK

DISA, DSS award second OTA to build governmentwide security clearance system

Defense officials said Tuesday that they had awarded a $75 million other transaction agreement to build major components of the IT system that will eventually handle all background investigations and security clearance adjudications for federal employees and contractors.

The award went to a team of vendors led by Perspecta, the same large government contractor that won a separate $49 million OTA last year to build another portion of the National Background Investigation System (NBIS).

The new agreement is specifically meant to build the security architecture and data services for NBIS. Officials decided it was needed after lessons learned from the first OTA, which focused primarily on building investigation management tools.

“We’ve had pieces of the NBIS application running at other DoD agency data centers and being built by other partners, independent of this common enterprise architecture,” said Terry Carpenter, the program executive officer for NBIS. “What we’re figuring out is by building out a common data broker, we can get an even greater efficiency. This is a federal-wide service that has to be up 365 days a year, 24 by seven. And to assure that type of robustness, we really wanted to make sure we were taking advantage of the cloud architecture to make sure that the application has those kinds of properties: Self-healing, self-aware, can expand with the demand. And all of those pieces are in this new OTA.”

Keep reading article at: https://federalnewsnetwork.com/nbib-transfer-to-dod/2019/05/disa-dss-award-second-ota-to-build-governmentwide-security-clearance-system/

July 9, 2019 By AMK

Will alternative acquisition methods become the norm?

Recent research from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) raises some important questions about the direction and focus of Defense Department research and development funding.

According to Andrew Hunter, head of CSIS’s Defense Industrial Initiatives Group, recent data documents a nearly 50 percent drop in spending on systems design and development (SDD) — a critical part of the R&D continuum — amounting to billions of dollars in reductions over the last four or five years. Over the same time, CSIS’s research shows an almost dollar-for-dollar increase in spending on alternative acquisition methods, especially Other Transactions Authority (OTA) contracts and, to a lesser extent, so-called “mid-tier” acquisitions. Hence, the question raised by CSIS: Are we short-circuiting long-term research and development in favor of more immediate opportunities for capability advancement?

The question is an important one and has real ramifications for the nation’s long-term battlefield dominance. And while the data itself certainly does not prove a correlation or the existence of a problem, it offers a good jumping off point for a more intensive examination. It also offers an important opportunity to assess traditional views of systems development against the intersection of commercial technology development as they relate to future war-fighting capabilities.

At its core, the question is really a contemporary version of that which drove many of the acquisition reforms of the 1990s. Those reforms were, in part, an effort to address the fact that while the research and development landscape had fundamentally shifted, the government’s approach to R&D and the marketplace had not. By the mid-1970s, private sector investments in research and development had, for the first time ever, surpassed the government’s; and the gap between the two had consistently widened. Studies also showed that just the 75 largest technology companies were spending more annually on R&D than the entire defense department; and about 75 percent of them would not do business with the government, especially in R&D.

Keep reading article at: https://www.federaltimes.com/opinions/2019/05/22/will-alternative-acquisition-methods-become-the-norm

June 20, 2019 By AMK

Government innovation? Weirdness comes in threes

How often have you heard that the government is stodgy and resistant to change? Large bureaucracies, both in business and government, do trend that way. But three curious initiatives from federal agencies occurred in the days leading to the long Memorial Day weekend.

Unrelated, they nevertheless connect thematically by showing an instinct towards government innovation, that is, a government willing to try something different.

First was the appointment of Jose Arrietta as the chief information officer of the Department of Health and Human Services. I’ve interviewed Arrietta a couple of times. He’s a smart cookie. He’s possesses good technology chops, having been one of the people trying to prove how blockchain can work in federal settings. In his relatively short time at HHS, Arrietta saw to it that the first blockchain application received authority to operate. That in itself is radical.

But as Jason Miller reported, Arrietta is an unconventional choice to lead an IT complex as vast and diverse as that of HHS. It’s government innovation in personnel. He’s mainly an acquisition guy, and acquisition is an important part of technology and information management. The blockchain application is in fact acquisition. Now Arrietta will have to show he can widen his viewpoint and make things happen in all areas overseen by a CIO.

Keep reading article at: https://federalnewsnetwork.com/tom-temin-commentary/2019/05/government-innovation-weirdness-comes-in-threes/

The Defense Department has made progress implementing acquisition reforms in recent years, but leadership needs to pay more attention for meaningful change to take place, according to an audit released this week by the Government Accountability Office.

Perspecta Enterprise Solutions LLC won a $75 million other transaction agreement on May 14 to continue modernization of the federal security clearance process, in particular with machine learning and related technology.

Defense officials said Tuesday that they had awarded a $75 million other transaction agreement to build major components of the IT system that will eventually handle all background investigations and security clearance adjudications for federal employees and contractors.

Recent research from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) raises some important questions about the direction and focus of Defense Department research and development funding.

How often have you heard that the government is stodgy and resistant to change? Large bureaucracies, both in business and government, do trend that way. But three curious initiatives from federal agencies occurred in the days leading to the long Memorial Day weekend.

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