U.S. Digital Service | The Contracting Education Academy

August 8, 2016 By AMK

OMB unveils new one-stop shop for digital services

The U.S. Digital Service, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the General Services Administration (GSA) opened a centralized online hub where federal agencies can go for the low-down on how to acquire digital services.

In a July 26 blog post, USDS Administrator Mikey Dickerson and Anne Rung, chief acquisition officer at the Office of Management and Budget, unveiled the TechFAR Hub, designed to offer federal procurement employees workaday tools they can use to get digital services.

The effort jibes with other Obama administration moves to centralize information for contracting personnel. USDS’ TechFAR Handbook and Digital Services Playbook both provide best practices and techniques for digital services.

Keep reading this article at: https://fcw.com/articles/2016/07/26/techfar-hub-usds.aspx

March 14, 2016 By AMK

White House would curb contracting waste with innovation labs

The Obama administration is rolling out a new weapon in the perennial battle against contract cost overruns and agencies taking delivery of instantly obsolete software.

Acquisition Innovation Labs, as announced last Wednesday by U.S. Chief Acquisition Officer Anne Rung, will “provide a pathway to test and implement more innovative approaches to acquisitions, with a strong emphasis on improving IT investments.”

Under the plan, each agency will appoint acquisition innovation advocates (AIAs) to promote testing of new ideas and better ways of executing existing practices in their agencies through managed risk-taking. Agencies will set up innovation labs “to promote meaningful collaboration through an integrated product team,” Rung said, and will participate in a new AIA Council to maximize collaboration across the government as well as share best practices and lessons learned.

Keep reading this article at: http://m.govexec.com/contracting/2016/03/white-house-would-curb-contracting-waste-innovation-labs/126578

February 12, 2016 By AMK

Most government employees don’t know about USDS or 18F

New digitally-focused federal agencies may need awareness campaigns, a new survey shows.

About 54 percent of federal employees don’t know about organizations such as 18F, the General Services Administration’s tech fix-it team, or the U.S. Digital Service, a White House IT consultancy now being replicated in other departments, according to a survey conducted by social network GovLoop and cloud platform vendor Acquia.

The survey, which polled about 120 civilian, defense, state and local public sector employees about digital services, found that 54 percent didn’t know what those groups were, and 18 percent felt they had little or no impact on their organizations.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.nextgov.com/cio-briefing/2016/01/survey-most-Government-employees-dont-know-about-usds-18f/125537

November 18, 2015 By AMK

Teaching digital buyers to transform acquisition

If you teach someone traditional government procurement, you’ll get better procurement. But if you use agile learning methods and immerse the same person in real-world digital services buys, then you might help transform government acquisition.

That’s the theory behind the Office of Management and Budget’s outside-the-box approach to creating a training program for digital services contracting that’s as innovative as the methods to be bought.

OMB’s Office of Federal Procurement Policy launched a $360,000 challenge in May seeking proposals for the program. The Digital Services Contracting Professional Training and Development Program is intended to develop professionals who can embed with agency digital service teams as their business advisers, as well as acting as advocates for digital services procurement governmentwide.

Three challenge finalists — teams from GovLoop, Management Concepts Inc., ICF International, and my company, ASI Government — received $20,000 each to expand their initial responses, deliver oral presentations, and instruct a one-hour classroom session. The ICF-ASI team won the grand prize: an opportunity to test our proposal by training 30 certified contracting professionals, along with $250,000 to cover our costs. There’s another $50,000 in prize money available for developing an ongoing program.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.govexec.com/excellence/promising-practices/2015/10/teaching-digital-buyers-transform-acquisition/122948/

September 9, 2015 By AMK

Getting smarter about IT acquisition

It’s been 15 months since Joanie Newhart, an associate administrator at the Office of Federal Procurement Policy, and Tony Grayson, acquisition program executive at the Federal Acquisition Institute, announced big plans for updating the certification for federal procurement professionals.

At the 2014 FOSE conference, Newhart talked about how FAI would revamp the Federal Acquisition Certification in Contracting (FAC-C), which hadn’t been updated since 2008, to include specialized training for IT procurement, among other improvements.

The week before, Lesley Field, who was OFPP’s acting administrator at the time, had issued a memo citing the importance of better aligning FAC-C with the Defense Department’s contracting certification curriculum to strengthen the development of civilian agencies’ acquisition professionals.

The new curriculum has been in place for more than a year, and efforts to improve acquisition continue to evolve.

Keep reading this article at: http://fcw.com/articles/2015/08/27/feature-it-acquisition.aspx

The U.S. Digital Service, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the General Services Administration (GSA) opened a centralized online hub where federal agencies can go for the low-down on how to acquire digital services.

The Obama administration is rolling out a new weapon in the perennial battle against contract cost overruns and agencies taking delivery of instantly obsolete software.

New digitally-focused federal agencies may need awareness campaigns, a new survey shows.

If you teach someone traditional government procurement, you’ll get better procurement. But if you use agile learning methods and immerse the same person in real-world digital services buys, then you might help transform government acquisition.

It’s been 15 months since Joanie Newhart, an associate administrator at the Office of Federal Procurement Policy, and Tony Grayson, acquisition program executive at the Federal Acquisition Institute, announced big plans for updating the certification for federal procurement professionals.

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