TSA | The Contracting Education Academy

October 30, 2020 By cs

GAO: DHS chief acquisition officer must improve vetting of components’ procurement executives

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has released a report stating that the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) chief acquisition officer needs to improve the assessment of DHS units’ component acquisition executives (CAE).

In its report, GAO says that the DHS chief acquisition officer selects CAEs that handle DHS components’ acquisition-related policies, workforce, data collection and reporting functions.

Components such as the U.S. Coast Guard, Transportation Security Administration (TSA), Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction Office (CWMD) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) have implemented CAE vetting procedures, according to GAO.

However, the watchdog said that four out of five CAEs in the DHS Management Directorate, including three acting CAEs, “have not been subjected to this process.”

Keep reading this article at: https://www.executivegov.com/2020/10/gao-dhs-chief-acquisition-officer-must-improve-vetting-of-components-procurement-executives/

October 29, 2019 By cs

Air Force adds attitude to governmentwide category management

In the dog-eat-dog world of raising and training canines for government patrol and detection duties, federal agencies increasingly are competing not only among themselves, but also with foreign governments for a dwindling supply in a global market.

The Air Force is the executive agent for Defense Department working dogs — buying, training and breeding them at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, where the Transportation Security Administration also trains its dogs.

Late last year, Jaclyn Rubino, the director of the strategic sourcing program office at the Homeland Security Department and manager of the governmentwide security and protection category, appointed the Air Force to lead creation of the governmentwide working dog category intelligence report (CIR). In so doing, Rubio signaled support for the robust, analytics-based, requirements-focused and market-facing category management approach the Air Force follows.

Rubino flew to San Antonio and actively participated in the CIR requirements workshop. In addition, she helped reach across federal agencies including the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Customs and Border Patrol, the U.S. Marshals, the FBI, the Transportation Safety Administration, and the Defense Department to win their participation and brief their working dog programs.

Not only is the Air Force leading the pack in the working dog category, it also has been charged by the Defense Department to help its fellow services learn from the Air Force approach to category management.

Keep reading this article at: https://federalnewsnetwork.com/commentary/2019/10/air-force-adds-attitude-to-governmentwide-category-management/

June 25, 2019 By AMK

OFPP issues 4th ‘myth-busting’ memo

The purpose of this memorandum is to improve awareness of vendor engagement strategies that Federal procurement thought leaders are using to create a more responsive buying process, modernize the acquisition culture, and deliver greater value to the taxpayer.

The memorandum also asks each Chief Financial Officers Act (CFO Act) agency to ensure it has designated an industry liaison to work with the agency’s Acquisition Innovation Advocate (AIA), the Office of Small Disadvantaged Business Utilization (OSDBU), and other key acquisition personnel to promote modern vendor communication practices and counter misconceptions that drive today’s risk aversion culture.

The President’s Management Agenda challenges agencies to deliver 21st century services by modernizing information technology, increasing transparency and accountability, and building a modem workforce. 1 To keep up with the rapidly accelerating pace of technological change, a number of agencies have sought better ways to communicate with industry so they can better understand the commercial marketplace, attract new contractors, and encourage current partners to use new processes and develop, test, and offer more modern solutions. Despite this progress, the pace of adoption has been limited relative to the total volume of activity that potentially could benefit from these efforts; only a fraction of our transactions are using these new ways of doing business. For this reason, the Office of Federal Procurement Policy (OFPP) is taking two steps to improve awareness of these modem communication practices.

First, OFPP is using its long-standing “myth-busting” campaign to spotlight how front line acquisition officials and managers have been challenging entrenched ideas about engagement between the public and private sectors. Attachment I highlights ten misconceptions related to innovative practices and showcases successful agency efforts. As additional myths are identified and new practices evolve, new examples will be posted on the Innovation Hub2 of the Acquisition Gateway to foster dynamic conversations among the acquisition workforce.

Keep reading memo at: https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/SIGNED-Myth-Busting-4-Strenthening-Engagement-with-Industry-Partners-through-Innovative-Business-Practices.pdf

January 2, 2019 By AMK

What to expect from ‘other transaction authorities’ in 2019

If there is one term that has punctuated government contracting in 2018, it is “OTA.”

The use of OTAs or “other transaction authority” agreements has grown significantly in the federal government over the last year, due to this contract vehicle’s ability to help federal agencies rapidly incorporate new technologies required to ensure the success of today’s complex missions.

Although this style of contract is not new to the federal contracting community (in fact, it was brought onto the scene in the 1950s to aid NASA in the space race), we can expect to see additional use of OTAs to gain access to groundbreaking technologies faster and more efficiently in 2019.

There are three things you can expect to see from OTAs in the next year and beyond.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.nextgov.com/ideas/2018/12/what-expect-other-transaction-authorities-2019/153713/

June 21, 2017 By AMK

New platform tries to bring some normalcy to the agile craze

Nine months after Federal News Radio asked if the agile craze is taking the government by storm, the data and actions continue to show a lack of coordinated contracting approach leading to a bunch of one-off contracts.

Over at the Homeland Security Department is the most obvious example of this growing challenge.

In late April, the Transportation Security Administration awarded Accenture a $64 million contract for the EAGLE II multiple award contract vehicle to transform more than 70 applications into a modern architecture.

About a month later, DHS’s procurement office bailed on setting up its $1.5 billion small-business contract vehicle for agile services after two rounds of awards and two rounds of protests. DHS told the Government Accountability Office (GAO) it didn’t have the expertise to fix the procurement and would develop a new acquisition approach in 2018.

The same agency is trying to implement agile with separate approaches, leading to duplication of resources and potentially putting vendors through the long and costly procurement process multiple times.

Let’s dig deeper into what’s going on across the government.

Keep reading this article at: https://federalnewsradio.com/reporters-notebook-jason-miller/2017/06/normalcyagilecraze/

The MITRE Corp. has developed a free online platform called Acquisition in the Digital Age (AiDA) to provide tools, references and best practices for agencies to use agile methodologies. It can be accessed here: https://aida.mitre.org/

In the dog-eat-dog world of raising and training canines for government patrol and detection duties, federal agencies increasingly are competing not only among themselves, but also with foreign governments for a dwindling supply in a global market.

The purpose of this memorandum is to improve awareness of vendor engagement strategies that Federal procurement thought leaders are using to create a more responsive buying process, modernize the acquisition culture, and deliver greater value to the taxpayer.

If there is one term that has punctuated government contracting in 2018, it is “OTA.”

Nine months after Federal News Radio asked if the agile craze is taking the government by storm, the data and actions continue to show a lack of coordinated contracting approach leading to a bunch of one-off contracts.

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