Is Innovative Procurement the Answer to Budgetary Constraints?

As agencies continue to feel pressure to modernize their aging infrastructure, and find other avenues for completing their respective missions with restrained funding, several areas of interesting solutions seem to be working their way across government.

As blogged by Steve Kelman on Federal Computer Week's The Lectern, several agencies are using competitive prototyping, and other innovations, as a step to encourage groundbreaking solutions by industry, combined with evaluating process over paper.

First up the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Flexible Agile Support for the Homeland or FLASH, which was designed to be a small business contract for a variety of Agile development and other DevOp services. The source selection process focused on the use of tech demonstrations, and forgoing the typical Request for Proposal process which is usually daunting for small businesses, especially newer entrants into the market.

This was an excellent approach to acquiring software development services, but was regretfully plagued with management errors in the evaluation and selection process.

A teachable moment for sure, but DHS has made a commitment to innovative, and will continue to find ways to improve its procurement processes and find the best ways to bring in innovative firms and solutions to the agency as discussed on Government Matters.

These tech demos are an excellent way to see how firms behave, think, interact with users, and of course, verify the quality of the products and services being developed. These are tangible factors for evaluation, and can simply not be done with paper-based approaches to selecting vendors.

Besides DHS and 18F from the General Services Administration, the Department of Veterans Affairs, used a tech demo to select a vendor for a task order for software development to support benefit appeals processing modernization. The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services has done tech demos, as has the Department of Health and Human Services, who have been pioneers in digital services through the Buyers Club, and the leadership of Mark Naggar.

This past week, the Office of Personnel Management issued a Request for Information on innovative solutions to modernize their infrastructure, and how best to pay for it. Perhaps a culture shift is underway across government, which is a good thing. A very, very good thing.

Let’s hope that these initiatives continue to spread across government, and that the days of reading through 100-page RFPs are at an end for both industry and the government.

Is Procurement Reform Possible Or Illusory?

This article originally appeared on the Public Spend Forum.

There has been much talk about procurement reform over the last few decades, and has been a hot topic for the last several years. Many initiatives are ongoing, most notably the Section 809 Panel for the Department of Defense. In its initial report, new policies are not being proposed, no new laws or regulations. There is actually a focus on elimination of what bogs down the ability for the desired; speed, agility, and a renewed sense of mission.

However, much talk of “acquisition reform” revolves around a discussion of what is wrong with federal procurement. This discussion is about what needs to happen if we are going to keep up with modern technology, secure our aged technological platforms, and overall improve the performance of government.

An excellent example of this type of thinking comes from Orion Hindawi, CEO and co-founder of Tanium, in a recent piece on Federal News Radio. Although I completely agree with his positions, the talk of “acquisition reform” never centers on the root cause of the issues, and why we are seemingly going in circles when it comes to federal buying.

If one wants to get at the heart of the matter, then required reading should be the guest blog of Steve Kelman’s The Lectern on Federal Computer Week.  David Eaves, Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and Director, discusses why reform efforts may prove to be fruitless, and even dangerous.

 Mr. Eaves writes:

…Procurement is often cited as the big bad bogeyman holding us back. If only we fixed procurement, there would be more choice, better vendors and less failure among government IT projects.

I don't buy it.

We can get better choice, better vendors and less failure without reform. I'm not saying procurement is perfect. But the benefits of reforming procurement are not needed and the dangers are significant…

So what is the issue then?

…My observations have been that learning to navigate procurement is one of the key elements that differentiates successful from unsuccessful companies in the government space. Sadly, it can sometimes become the core skill of success, more relevant than even the ability to deliver an effective product or service…

Here is where we start to narrow our focus about what the real issues are, since we are talking about culture, and why this culture has created a system that is complex, slow, and does not normally satisfy needs.

Part of this situation needs to start looking beyond simply blaming contracting officers for poor performance. I never understood how this strategy would be effective. How can one possibility be expected to be “innovative” when you are not provided any resources our support for doing so? Performance metrics are misaligned with objectives, all actions are focused on simple compliance and not taking any unnecessary risks, and servicing the customer as a business advisor is often seen as less than ideal.

Leadership is a major issue. There needs to be more knowledge transfer to demonstrate to acquisition leaders that the reason things are so bad might be the reflection in the mirror. Cultivating a culture for people to really think outside the box is a good thing. The current procurement rules allow for innovation, and more commercial practices, as discussed in the Office of Science Technology Policy and the Office of Management and Budget Innovative Contracting Case Studies, a document that describes several ways federal agencies are getting more innovation per taxpayer dollar – all under existing laws and regulations.

A major shift in collaborating with industry is also in order. As Mr. Eaves points out, government personnel who can identify good technology and practices from bad ones is limited. It really is asking a lot of public servants who rarely buy technology, or who are not experts, to be able to work on this ever-changing landscape without specialization. Therefore, industry must be able to step in and help government understand the technology and practices that provide a mutually satisfactory outcome.
Win-win is always at the top of industry’s mind, regardless of the unfortunate stigmas associated with the industry-government relationship.

Finally, back to Mr. Eaves:

…The reality is procurement law allows for a fair degree of flexibility. Procurement lore does not…

…This culture change that USDS engaged in is not easy, but changing lore is probably easier and more effective than changing law…

The U.S. Digital Service TechFar handbook, is an excellent guide on procuring IT in a flexible and innovative manner, and a culture-hacking tool. It can be done, all within the existing framework, if there is a will to be better buyers, and the desire to change the status quo.

Many in industry believe that acquisition reform efforts will have a net positive outcome, that will lower barriers to entry, and allow them more opportunities. Mr. Eaves believes this to be fantasy, and I agree.

What Is The Future of 18F?

After another scathing inspector general (IG) report about the 18F program at the General Services Administration, it seems like perhaps this program needs some retooling.

This report was was covered extensively by FCW and many other federal IT media outlets, in addition to the Washington Post. 18F has been a bit of a punching bag, as they also got negative press for spending a weekend redesigning their logo, and of course the first IG report discussing their finances and their management failures.

What has always bothered me about 18F is how they seemingly have been able to operate outside the constraints that all other IT service providers are forced into. Further, why does following established enterprise architecture, cyber, QA, and IA standards seem like "needless bureaucracy", which seems to be the pervasive attitude of many at 18F, according to internal sources? I understand that many of these developers and engineers have little to no government experience, but doesn't management?

It just seems like you have to either have innovation or be trapped by rules and regulations. Can they not co-exist? It is akin to saying you cannot have both procurement innovation and the FAR? Steve Kelman's piece on his FCW blog countered that argument, discussing share in savings.

Government management can be frustrating, messy, and sometimes redundant. However, it takes effective leadership to produce results. I have no doubt in the talents of 18F, but the IG reports are highlighting important shortcomings in the program that need to be addressed.

Is the IG report seemingly biased and possibly agenda driven? Maybe. Nonetheless, it does not make what they found not true either.

Agile Development Starts With Agile Contracting

ttp://www.heightsit.com

The General Services Administration’s highly touted Blanket Purchase Agreement for Agile development, otherwise known as 18F, has been delayed until July 1. Perhaps GSA should think about delaying the solicitation some more. 

One issue that I have been discussing is the lack of capability in the acquisition workforce when it comes to Agile, in general. Their training and experience has been centered, for the most part, on large, multi-year contracts that use waterfall approaches to software development. Agile requires a new set of skills, and my fear is that 18F will face difficulties with implementation because the cart is being put before the horse.

To help alleviate this issue, the U.S. Digital Service and Office of Management and Budget’s Office of Federal Procurement Policy has recently put up a Challenge; to teach the acquisition workforce how to contract for these digital services.

According to the Challenge announcement, the program, which is deigned to be six months or fewer in length (fewer is the hope), would be aimed at helping federal contracting officers and contract specialists navigate digital services procurement.

Per the announcement, a successful program will teach contracting professional how to:

• Understand and procure digital services and supplies utilizing concepts such as those described in the Digital Services Playbook and the TechFAR (e.g, DevOps, UX, Design Services, Agile Software Development, Open Source, Cloud, Iaas, SaaS, and PaaS).
• Appropriately measure the success of these contracts based on industry standards.
• Accurately describe and define the value received.
• Encourage the use of commercial practices and innovative approaches (e.g. modular contracting, broad agency announcements, challenges and prizes) to ensure procurements can capture flexible and rapidly changing technology advancements.

This Challenge demonstrates the reality that procurement shops across government do not have the internal capability to acquire these services. However, why was this Challenge not done a year ago? Why has capability for Agile contracting not become a top priority for the Federal Acquisition Institute, or the Defense Acquisition University?

The Challenge program is set to rollout January 2016, but I hope that agencies understand the capability gaps and fill them such that the 18F program does not get further delayed in its implementation.