Technology | The Contracting Education Academy

August 19, 2019 By AMK

Money spent through OTAs surges to more than $4 billion

Other Transaction Agreements are an increasingly popular contracting tool, and they’re affecting overall government contracting numbers.

OTA purchases across the government surged from $2.3 billion in fiscal 2017 to over $4 billion in fiscal 2018.

The numbers come from the BGOV200, an annual ranking of the top 200 federal contractors created by Bloomberg Government.

“While multiple-award contracting is expected to dominate spending for years to come, agencies are also leveraging new acquisition methods to buy goods and services more quickly and easily in ways they haven’t before,” the report states.

The OTA authority, which was expanded by the 2016 National Defense Authorization Act, allows agencies to sidestep the Federal Acquisition Regulation and work with innovative, small companies that don’t normally do business with the government.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.fedscoop.com/otas-contracting-fiscal-2018-bgov/

August 15, 2019 By AMK

OMB, GSA to oversee ‘technology business management’ buys

The federal government is taking concrete steps to require agencies to use Technology Business Management (TBM) methodology and data standards to measure IT costs and create a cross-agency framework for understanding IT spending.

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the General Services Administration (GSA) are teaming up to create a review board to supervise agency procurement of TBM tools and services. Agencies are required to adopt TBM and to go through the coming Task Order Review Board (TORB) as part of the acquisition process.

At stake is how $80 billion to $90 billion in federal IT spending is measured and managed.

The TORB is set up to exercise considerable authority over TBM acquisition, providing technical expertise and documents to support procurement and ultimately approval to proceed with an acquisition or revisions to an agency’s TBM plans “to address deficiencies or concerns,” according to contracting documents.

Keep reading this article at: https://fcw.com/articles/2019/08/07/tbm-review-board-mazmanian.aspx?m=1

August 14, 2019 By AMK

New rule bans government purchase of Chinese telecom gear

Three departments in charge of federal purchasing policy have unveiled an interim rule amending Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) to ban agencies from purchasing telecommunications and video surveillance equipment from five Chinese firms, including Huawei.

The interim rule from the General Services Administration, the Department of Defense and NASA took effect Aug. 13 and stems from a provision in the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) prohibiting federal agencies from purchasing telecommunications and video surveillance equipment, along with any “substantial or essential component of any system, or as critical technology as part of any system” from the Chinese tech firms or their affiliates. The regulation language will apply to all new contracts and procurements as well as existing indefinite delivery contracts, as well as options picked up for existing contracts.

While the NDAA does allow for the issuance of individual, one-time waivers to agencies, the rule requires contractors to identify as part of their offer any telecommunications equipment or services that will be provided to the government, including those provided by subcontractors. Acknowledging that such a rule could result in a heavy “information collection burden” on federal agencies, the three departments are updating the System for Award Management to allow contractors to disclose these parts and components on an annual basis.

Keep reading this article at: https://fcw.com/articles/2019/08/07/china-telecom-regulation-johnson.aspx?m=1

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/

Other Transaction Agreements are an increasingly popular contracting tool, and they’re affecting overall government contracting numbers.

The federal government is taking concrete steps to require agencies to use Technology Business Management (TBM) methodology and data standards to measure IT costs and create a cross-agency framework for understanding IT spending.

Three departments in charge of federal purchasing policy have unveiled an interim rule amending Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) to ban agencies from purchasing telecommunications and video surveillance equipment from five Chinese firms, including Huawei.

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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