On his first day in office, President Obama challenged leaders in government to "use innovative tools, methods, and systems to cooperate among themselves, across all levels of Government, and with nonprofit organizations, businesses, and individuals in the private sector." The acquisition process represents one of the most important areas of collaboration between government and the private sector.
Unfortunately, it is also among the most complex and least transparent. The Better Buy Project is an experiment dedicated to the belief that there's a lot of room for improvement in the way government buys products and services. We're testing this hypothesis by asking for your ideas on how to make acquisition process more open, transparent and collaborative.
The best part of this project is that the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) GSA would really like to adopt some of your best ideas. Promising ideas will be selected by GSA to be piloted on an upcoming acquisition, where lessons learned will be captured for future implementation. But that really depends on us, and the ideas we're able to produce.
This project is concerned primarily with the pre-contract-award stages of the acquisition process—the activities that take place before the government "signs on the dotted line" to buy a product or service. Those areas are:
The ultimate goal is to improve how government learns about and chooses what it buys—in other words, to make government a more informed, more effective consumer.
We are looking for ideas to make federal acquisition more open, transparent, and collaborative. What does that mean?
We believe that making the process more open, transparent and collaborative will make government more likely to end up with the right item at the right price.
This online forum allows you the opportunity to post comments and other information that will remain publicly viewable on this website. The site therefore operates a moderation policy to ensure that comments are appropriate and not harmful to others. Comments which include any of the following may be deleted by site administrators:
Additionally, while we invite open participation and diverse viewpoints to be shared, moderators reserve the right to remove posts which do not address some aspect of the stated purpose of this forum: To collect ideas about using collaboration and social media to improve the acquisition process. We deeply value your time and input, and our desire is to remove as few posts as possible while ensuring that a focused, constructive discussion takes place.
Finally, in addition to this policy, this site allows individual users to flag ideas as being spam, duplicate, or otherwise inappropriate. When an idea is flagged a sufficient number of times, it is automatically placed into a queue for review by moderators. We reserve the right to remove any posting that receives a sufficient number of "flags" to be placed in this queue, though will not automatically do so.
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Since before CICA was enacted, the government has been telling the contractor community what it wants and how it wants the work to be done (specification SOWs), thereby assuming all risk of failure. Presumable we hire contractors based on their experience and expertise but we don't give them the ... more
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J.D.Bailey
Performance is fine, but progress is better. A Jeep in the mud can show great performance while impressively spinning wheels, but the Jeep getting out of the mud is the progress I want. For that progress (IMO) we need academic participation up-front with the customer defining real requirements and pragmatic solutions that will allow industry to actually deliver products on budget and on time.
.Gov, .Mil, and .Com need .Edu today just like in WW2. Industry never provides the best solution, just a ver... more
Performance is fine, but progress is better. A Jeep in the mud can show great performance while impressively spinning wheels, but the Jeep getting out of the mud is the progress I want. For that progress (IMO) we need academic participation up-front with the customer defining real requirements and pragmatic solutions that will allow industry to actually deliver products on budget and on time.
.Gov, .Mil, and .Com need .Edu today just like in WW2. Industry never provides the best solution, just a very-good or very-poor expensive solution that takes years to field, more years to displace, and a prime-functional performance for a couple years and far more tax-dollars.
Today Moore's law still says 18 Months. The "*" law is now 10 to 12 months. IOW: Set all subordinate cycles to 11 months. State the threat and requirements within 11 months, Academia works with customer and industry to define best solution in 11 months, Industry has first product delivered for test/eval in 11 months, customer accepts delivery and starts fielding and training within 12 months..., then repeat for lifecycle logistics and readiness innovations until displacement.
Tactical Actuality makes Strategic Reality!
Sterling Whitehead
I think the majority opinion here is this: "The government should define the problem to solve, but not dictate how the problem is solved."
Plus I really like the succinctness of vimay.raman's comment "Contractors are infrequently asked to provide a solution, they are simply asked to respond to a checklist of items."
Bradley V
The point of performance based SOWs is to define work in terms of outcomes. For a long time, the FAR has required performance, as opposed to specification, SOWs when it can be done. But it's not always appropriate, depending on what service or supply is being procured. A SOO is so general that you sometimes end up comparing apples to oranges when contractors propose varied technical solutions. So that has problems of its own. But I think we are moving in the right direction.
Bradley V
The point of performance based SOWs is to define work in terms of outcomes. For a long time, the FAR has required performance, as opposed to specification, SOWs when it can be done. But it's not always appropriate, depending on what service or supply is being procured. A SOO is so general that you sometimes end up comparing apples to oranges when contractors propose varied technical solutions. So that has problems of its own. But I think we are moving in the right direction. But this isn't a new i... more
The point of performance based SOWs is to define work in terms of outcomes. For a long time, the FAR has required performance, as opposed to specification, SOWs when it can be done. But it's not always appropriate, depending on what service or supply is being procured. A SOO is so general that you sometimes end up comparing apples to oranges when contractors propose varied technical solutions. So that has problems of its own. But I think we are moving in the right direction. But this isn't a new idea! Why is is posted as a new idea here?
Boof
I think the majority of contracting officers are on board with this however we work for the requirments offices, indirectly anyway. Even if they start out saying they want PWS at the start, it goes downhill very quickly. First they cannot determine what the measures should be or how to obtain the data. Then when we come up with some simple standards, they start listing all the rules we have to put in the contract to keep those contractors from cheating. It ends up a SOW.
You award a fixed price... more
I think the majority of contracting officers are on board with this however we work for the requirments offices, indirectly anyway. Even if they start out saying they want PWS at the start, it goes downhill very quickly. First they cannot determine what the measures should be or how to obtain the data. Then when we come up with some simple standards, they start listing all the rules we have to put in the contract to keep those contractors from cheating. It ends up a SOW.
You award a fixed price PWS based on the contractor explaining he will use 18 people to reach the goal. After beginning work, bringing in high quality personnel, and installing some new software, the contractor finds he can meet the goal with 15 people. The customer demands they employ 18 or give us money back. They just don't get the PWS concept.
Chris Hamm
I agree with the concept, and judging by the number of votes, so do the majority. The problem that I run into is the "How" part. I'd be interested to see a few ideas on how new technology can solve this transition.
Steve Radick
I don't think the answer is to "stop using specification SOWs," rather, I think it's to stop "defaulting" to specification SOWs. In some cases, the government is simply looking for butt in seat staff supplement type support. They aren't looking for private sector ingenuity or innovation. In other cases, a PWS focused on outcomes is absolutely the right way to go, especially when you're looking for a consultant who can help you solve a problem. I don't think it's an either-or type o... more
I don't think the answer is to "stop using specification SOWs," rather, I think it's to stop "defaulting" to specification SOWs. In some cases, the government is simply looking for butt in seat staff supplement type support. They aren't looking for private sector ingenuity or innovation. In other cases, a PWS focused on outcomes is absolutely the right way to go, especially when you're looking for a consultant who can help you solve a problem. I don't think it's an either-or type of thing, but an education thing where the government should do a better job of using the right type of contract for the right type of work needed to be done.
vinay.raman
Completely agree with this. Contractors are infrequently asked to provide a solution, they are simply asked to respond to a checklist of items, where does the government benefit from innovation, if you are pricing out a commodity?
I think the key here is for the government to focus on building a PWS that specifies what deliverables must occur, with contextual knowledge of the environment from the government. Let the Contractors propose their expertise in solving the challenge for you. Otherwise govern... more
Completely agree with this. Contractors are infrequently asked to provide a solution, they are simply asked to respond to a checklist of items, where does the government benefit from innovation, if you are pricing out a commodity?
I think the key here is for the government to focus on building a PWS that specifies what deliverables must occur, with contextual knowledge of the environment from the government. Let the Contractors propose their expertise in solving the challenge for you. Otherwise government contracting will remain the way it is, incumbency capture is king, because we are just providing people, not solutions.
Kim Patrick Kobza
Said another way, increase the number of solution possibilities, lower barriers to entry and build a bigger intent that creates more inclusion. Perfect and compelling.
Dennis D. McDonald
Speaking as a contractor, I like outcome based measures as a way to specify work, with the assumptions that (1) the outcomes can be specified in unambiguous terms and (2) that the constraints the contractor must adhere to are spelled out.
Tim
I agree - outcome based measures are the way to go. Without outcome based measures there's too much temptation to rely on those contractors and outside experts to write those specification SOWs, and then temptation on the part of the contractors and outside experts to write them in such a way that limits true competition.
Peter G. Tuttle, CPCM
Richard - great suggestion. So far the feds have had a difficult time really adopting and using outcome-based requirements statements. I'd be interested in anybody's thoughts on how we can overcome these challenges regarding the use of PWS, SOO, etc. Without a framework for executing successfully, I am not sure they will be able to move forward in a meaningful (and cost effective) manner.
emma.antunes
Agreed- the more we can focus on outcomes and shift to performance based contracts, the better we'll be able to take advantage of contractor expertise. It's also a shift to buying IT as a service, rather than specifying hardware, software, etc.