streamlined acquisition process | The Contracting Education Academy

August 29, 2018 By AMK

Go far by getting picky with the FAR

Acquisition regulations don’t come with CliffsNotes, so members of a High Performance Team wrote 21 pages interpreting them and won a Department of Defense level award June 28 for their work.

The HPT members from Hanscom Air Force Base and several other major acquisition bases came together to better navigate what is commonly called Federal Acquisition Regulation 16.5. Their findings generated a 21-page Guiding Principles document, incorporated into Air Force Materiel Command’s Informational Guidance this past August and winning a 2017 Department of Defense Value Engineering Achievement Team Award. The tips laid out in the team’s document can reduce acquisition cycle times, saving money while getting products to warfighters faster.

“Many teams spend valuable time, money and resources using formal FAR 15.3 source selection procedures because there is so much stipulation, training and sample documentation available,” said Crystal Foster, chief of contracting for Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System Recapitalization team, who was one of two Hanscom members on the HPT. “Less experienced acquisition professionals gravitate toward that. They want specific direction and rules, but if they just took a closer look and use ‘broad discretion’ in FAR part 16.5, they would have more power over the process.”

Those with Air Force network access can read the final product here. To produce it, the HPT combed through 57,000 contract actions. By the team’s own estimate, those who use tactics outlined in the guide can save an average of seven weeks per order. If every program that could use these acquisition methods did so, it would streamline the process for 15 cents of every dollar the Air Force spends, for a total of $9 billion.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.afmc.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/1568794/go-far-by-getting-picky-with-the-far/

August 17, 2018 By AMK

Pentagon’s startup outreach office no longer an experiment

Diving into long-term relationships can be scary, but the Defense Department said it’s ready to go to commit to its startup outreach program.

Defense Innovation Unit Experimental (DIUx), the office charged with bringing Silicon Valley tech to the Pentagon, will now be known as Defense Innovation Unit (DIU).

The name change reflects military leaders’ “commitment to the importance of its mission” and signifies the permanence of the group within the country’s defense apparatus, according to Deputy Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan.

“DIUx has generated meaningful outcomes for the department and is a proven, valuable asset,” Shanahan wrote in a memo to agency leaders. “Though DIU will continue to experiment with new ways of delivering capability to the warfighter, the organization itself is no longer an experiment.”

Keep reading this article at: https://www.nextgov.com/cio-briefing/2018/08/pentagons-startup-outreach-office-no-longer-experiment/150408/

July 31, 2018 By AMK

Navy’s new acquisition tool speeds up tech prototyping

A research and development collaboration management company has been awarded a contract to helm a technology prototype consortium as part of a new acquisition process employed by the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center Atlantic, in Charleston, South Carolina.

SPAWAR awarded an other transaction authority to Advanced Technology International, of Summerville, South Carolina, for consortium management for SPAWAR’s Information Warfare Research Project (IWRP).

Under the contract, Advanced Technology International will manage a group of defense contractors who will complete projects for the government that address SPAWAR technology needs, and the consortium will facilitate competition for projects. Topics will be open to competition beginning in August 2018, the SPAWAR Systems Center Atlantic said.

The contract is worth $100 million over three years.

IWRP OTA is an acquisition tool that allows nontraditional industry partners to work with organizations across SPAWAR to prototype technology that supports naval information warfare capabilities. IWRP focuses on information technology areas such as cyberwarfare, cloud computing and data science.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.c4isrnet.com/home/2018/07/02/the-navys-new-acquisition-tool-speeds-up-tech-prototyping/

July 16, 2018 By AMK

Alternative acquisition approach offers promise

Small businesses often lead the pack in innovation and agility, but cumbersome acquisition processes can stall the way forward when working with government agencies.

The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) hopes to grease the skids between ingenuity and warfighters by offering a streamlined method for carrying out prototype projects and transitioning successes into follow-on production.

The Other Transaction Authority (OTA) methodology offers an alternative to the traditional rules outlined in the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) process. Congress officially implemented the OTA in 1994 as part of the National Defense Authorization Act. In the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2018, Congress doubled the dollar thresholds of OTAs that required approvals. In addition, the definition of prototype was broadened to include an analysis, process improvement, hardware and software.

Scott Stewart, technical director, Procurement Services Directorate, DISA, understands that today’s innovators in revolutionary and disruptive technologies come from a sector of the economy that faces fewer restrictions in procurement regulations than those the federal government poses. As a result, DISA executes and enters into OTA agreements to leverage leading-edge technologies, while appreciating and accommodating the limitations of these market leaders, he explains.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.afcea.org/content/alternative-acquisition-approach-offers-promise

July 11, 2018 By AMK

GSA looks to streamline acquisition for federal buyers

In a step it hopes will help ease agency acquisition of everything from IT systems to pencils, the General Services Administration (GSA) is adding a feature to its schedule programs called Order Level Materials, which was the subject of a recent rulemaking process.

The move will let agencies get products and services along with the associated items they need to make use of them at the order level, Mark Lee, assistant commissioner in the agency’s Federal Acquisition Service’s Office of Policy and Compliance, wrote a July 3 blog post.

Before the new rule, GSA said, agencies might have had to go through several contracting actions to get secondary services a total system solution or product might need before it could actually be implemented or put into use.

Keep reading this article at: https://fcw.com/articles/2018/07/05/gsa-olm-rule-acquisition.aspx

Acquisition regulations don’t come with CliffsNotes, so members of a High Performance Team wrote 21 pages interpreting them and won a Department of Defense level award June 28 for their work.

Diving into long-term relationships can be scary, but the Defense Department said it’s ready to go to commit to its startup outreach program.

A research and development collaboration management company has been awarded a contract to helm a technology prototype consortium as part of a new acquisition process employed by the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center Atlantic, in Charleston, South Carolina.

Small businesses often lead the pack in innovation and agility, but cumbersome acquisition processes can stall the way forward when working with government agencies.

In a step it hopes will help ease agency acquisition of everything from IT systems to pencils, the General Services Administration (GSA) is adding a feature to its schedule programs called Order Level Materials, which was the subject of a recent rulemaking process.

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