The Contracting Education Academy

Contracting Academy Logo
You are here: Home / Archives for procurement reform

By

How GSA is changing government buying

The General Services Administration (GSA) and its components manage a significant portfolio of the government’s spending, delivering the best value on goods and services for government, among other integral functions.
Emily W. Murphy, GSA Administrator

As GSA administrator and the commissioner of the Federal Acquisition Service, respectively, Emily Murphy and Alan Thomas have worked closely to spearhead a period of significant procurement reform, including combining the two-dozen multiple award schedules into one and experimenting with a government online shopping portal.

Federal Times sat down with Murphy and Thomas to discuss how the change has been a team effort and their vision for the future of the agency.

Read this interview at: https://www.federaltimes.com/acquisition/2019/09/12/acquiring-the-right-mindset-how-gsa-is-changing-government-buying/

By

For DoD, innovation isn’t the problem — so what is?

Three officials from varying military offices focused on innovation asserted that the department’s research and development game is strong, it’s the follow-through that causes problems.

The Defense Department doesn’t have an innovation problem, according to three top officials in charge of leading innovation efforts. The military is very good at coming up with new technologies; the problem comes when services try to adopt those new ideas.

The department has a long history of innovating, according to Steven Walker, director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, which 50 years ago created the networking protocols that would later become the internet.

“The country is innovative,” he said during a panel Wednesday at the 2019 Defense News Conference. “It’s the application of some of that innovation that we struggle with.”

Keep reading this article at: https://www.nextgov.com/cio-briefing/2019/09/dod-innovation-isnt-problem-so-what/159670/

By

HHS plans launch of AI, blockchain-based acquisition portal

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is test launching an acquisition portal named Accelerate that infuses blockchain and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies.

The blockchain-based acquisition portal will get a test run this fall and launch the beginning of the year, HHS CIO Jose Arrieta said.

Speaking at NextGov’s Emerging Tech summit on Aug. 14, Arrieta said the agency has been working on developing microservices for its Accelerate blockchain and artificial intelligence-infused acquisition portal.

The platform’s deep database of contracting data from the agency’s five acquisition systems will drive automatic pricing breaks for government the same way consumers can use competitive data at major retailers.

“If you look up the price of something on Amazon and show it to the cashier at Target or Best Buy,” he said, they will immediately give you the comparable discount offered at those other retailers. “That’s empowering. We created that ability for the contracting professional” on the portal, he said.

Keep reading this article at: https://gcn.com/articles/2019/08/16/hhs-accelerate.aspx

By

The 4 cornerstones of government acquisition reform

The General Services Administration’s strategy for improving the federal marketplace in the coming years will rely on approximately 25 reforms, according to agency officials, but a handful of those will serve as the central points to shore up the rest of the strategy.

“We are trying to simplify the buying and selling process,” said Alan Thomas, commissioner of GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service, at a July 24 Association for Federal Information Resources Management event.

According to Thomas, four of those simplification initiatives will serve as cornerstones, meaning that they are central to and tied in with the success of the other “stones” around them:

  1. Development of an enterprisewide contract writing system.
  2. Managing catalog data.
  3. Consolidating the Multiple Award Schedule program.
  4. Progressing on a commercial platform initiative.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.federaltimes.com/acquisition/2019/07/24/government-acquisition-reform-to-rely-on-4-cornerstones/

By

New HHS contract writing system testing more than an innovative technology approach

In early fiscal 2020, the Department of Health and Human Services will pilot its new contracting writing system called Accelerate.

HHS will work with a small group of contracting officers and industry to prove that using the cloud and blockchain technology is not only possible, but real.

Jose Arrieta, who is currently the chief information officer and was the acting deputy assistant secretary for grants, acquisition policy and accountability at HHS, said the agency has made a lot of progress since December when the Accelerate platform received the authority to operate.

The grants, acquisition policy and accountability office has been testing the ability of the system to take in actual data from the five contract writing systems HHS uses as well as the analytics for prices paid and terms and conditions and refining the microservices that they built to better communicate with program managers.

Keep reading this article at: https://federalnewsnetwork.com/ask-the-cio/2019/07/hhs-new-contract-writing-system-testing-more-than-an-innovative-technology-approach/

Contracting Academy Logo
75 Fifth Street, NW, Suite 300
Atlanta, GA 30308
info@ContractingAcademy.gatech.edu
Phone: 404-894-6109
Fax: 404-410-6885

RSS Twitter