streamlined acquisition process | The Contracting Education Academy

February 10, 2021 By cs

DoD is centralizing space acquisition, but still has bugs to work out

The Air Force is reorganizing its space acquisition office to better support the Space Force and other new space entities, but there are still questions surrounding exactly how the Pentagon will consolidate its space procurement.

Earlier this month the Air Force revamped its space acquisition shop by splitting it into three directorates.

“We have gone from an organization that was largely focused on policy and providing advice and counsel to the Air Force secretary to one that is now focused on, or will be focused on, acquisition, architecture, and then policy and integration,” Shawn Barnes, who is performing the duties of Air Force assistant secretary for space acquisition and integration, told reporters last week.

The three directorates are each run by a colonel and will focus on the three areas Barnes mentioned: acquisition, architecture, and policy and integration.

“Underlying those three key directorates,” Barnes said. “I have a number of subject matter experts that effectively work for all three of those directorates. They’re set up into different teams based on mission areas. We have a mission area related to precision navigation, timing and communications. We have a team that is focused on space control, a team that is focused on launch in space logistics, and then a team that’s focused on space control.”

Keep reading this article at: https://federalnewsnetwork.com/air-force/2021/01/dod-is-centralizing-space-acquisition-but-still-has-bugs-to-work-out/

December 14, 2020 By cs

IRS moves to speed up contracting through new procurement research partnership

The Internal Revenue Service recently set sights on introducing new technology-driven capabilities and applying innovative data science techniques to improve and elevate its procurement operations.

And last week, the agency launched a research partnership valued at almost $1 million that marks a deliberate move in that direction.

Through the newly unveiled collaboration, agency officials, university professors and students equipped with procurement and machine learning experience, and members of Virginia-based small business Data and Analytic Solutions will form a multidisciplinary team intended to accelerate the IRS’ contracting and award processes. It emerges as federal buying largely remains notoriously slow.

“When it comes to contracting, everyone seems to want it faster, cheaper, and better,” IRS Chief Procurement Officer Shanna Webbers told Nextgov over email Tuesday. “We recognized that we cannot continue to do business as usual and expect a different result.”

With that view top of mind, Webbers’ office earlier this year embarked on what she called “a game-changing transformation” that drew from feedback shared by procurement employees within the agency, as well as its customers and industry partners. Building on that, the organization is bringing forth new tools and techniques — like data analysis, visualization, and machine learning, among others — to advance how work is performed.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.nextgov.com/emerging-tech/2020/12/irs-moves-speed-contracting-through-new-procurement-research-partnership/170431/

August 14, 2019 By AMK

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/

February 22, 2019 By AMK

Bots could be climbing another rung on the workforce ladder

Bots have been making some headway in the government workforce, performing the kinds of mundane, clerical, routine tasks that make the people who do them feel less than human.

But robotic systems may soon take it up a notch, gaining new responsibilities with basic but essential procurement duties.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) recently issued a request for information looking for robotics and intelligent process automation applications in the commercial sector. The robots would need to perform tasks such as evaluating proposals, automating market research, performing cost and price analyses, carrying out modification actions, and issuing price negotiation memoranda. The Pentagon’s top research arm isn’t proposing that robots run the show or take people’s jobs, but it is talking about the kind of jobs that might move robots up a theoretical pay grade from what they’ve been doing.

DARPA said it wants to look into the possibility of using the “operational efficiency and functional capabilities” of such systems to perform “routine administrative tasks and document generation in the government procurement process.”

Keep reading this article at: https://www.governmentciomedia.com/bots-could-be-climbing-another-rung-workforce-ladder

January 30, 2019 By AMK

The new ‘other transactions authority’ guide — Helpful, but not enough

The Department of Defense recently published a new guide to Other Transactions Authority (OTA) contracts.

The guide attempts to answer a number of questions associated with the policies and practices surrounding OTAs. It partially succeeds, but it also falls short of providing the details both contracting officers in government and industry representatives need to use OTAs with confidence and alacrity.

Two helpful things the guidance makes clear are that OTAs are in fact contracts and that they are still likely to be very complicated contracts.

There is a perception in some quarters that OTAs are a magic wand that can eliminate the difficulties of doing business with the government. The guide implicitly refutes that premise as it correctly catalogues the many details anyone contemplating an OTA vehicle has to consider.

OTAs have real virtues, but they basically just substitute the world of commercial contracting for the world of Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) contracting. Anyone who has ever attempted to read a commercial contract for say a real estate sale or for cellphone service has some idea of how complex a commercial contract can be.

OTAs can simplify doing business with the government substantially, but a good contract is a good contract and a bad contract is a bad contract, independent of whether it is FAR based or an OTA.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/frankkendall/2019/01/03/the-new-other-transactions-authority-guide-helpful-but-not-enough