Why the Federal Acquisition Process?

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.

What Topics Are At Issue?

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:

Market Research and Requirements Definition Phase—Includes publicizing agency needs and requirements, and refining them based on further input and research about current capabilities.

Pre-Solicitation Phase—Includes web-based research, discussions with other federal agencies, meetings and open discussion forums with the private sector to discuss potential solutions, and requests for information soliciting input and ideas. The requirements are also further refined at this stage in the process.

Solicitation Phase—Includes the government notifying the private sector of the requirement through various channels such as E-Buy and FedBizOpps, holding open forums to discuss the requirement and answer questions (e.g., Industry Days), a review of the solicitation by interested companies, the written exchange between government and the private sector of questions, answers and clarifications on government requirements, and proposal submissions.

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.

What Kind of Feedback Are You Looking For?

We are looking for ideas to make federal acquisition more open, transparent, and collaborative. What does that mean?

Open—Raise awareness of upcoming needs government is trying to fulfill, in order to assemble a pool of qualified providers who can compete on specific requirements.

Transparent—Give the public and interested parties timely data on upcoming and ongoing buying activities, with the goal of promoting fair and high-quality competitions.

Collaborative—Find ways for the government to engage in more ‘open’ conversations with the private sector on topics such as best practices, emerging technologies and innovations, and market conditions.

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.

What Is Your Moderation Policy?

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:

Threats or incitements to violence

Use of obscenity

Disclosure of your or others' personally-identifiable information, such as social security number or credit card number

Duplicative or substantially duplicative postings by the same person or entity

Postings seeking employment or containing advertisements for a commercial product or service

Information posted in violation of law, including libel, condoning or encouraging illegal activity, revealing classified information, or infringing on a copyright or trademark

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.

permit respondents to propose contract type(s)

The Government invests a myriad of hours devising and compiling the ultimate contract vehicle for each acquisition - only to have laymen (read as politicians) and media (read as unschooled) criticize and condemn the acquisition process (read as arm-chair quarterbacks). I suggest the Government consider and attempt to develop acquisitions solely on the PWS/SOO with performance measures, and reference the FAR/DFARS, supplements, etc, BUT, BUT, BUT have the respondents propose their pricing and contract type(s). The Government typically conducts a risk analysis in any larger acquisition; this will permit the Government to apply it more mature skills in determining the viability of a proposal as opposed to trying to build a 5 lb bag to contain 10 lbs of product. With the submission of a contract type the respondents will be better able to show more relevant past performance credentials, prepare pricing more consistent with their practices, provide a better team, quality and management approach because it falls under the type of vehicle they are used to working with (albeit there are still Government requirements/regulations providing criteria and parameters). Additionally the Government will be able to assess the realism of a contract type against the technical approach rather handily and industry will be more competitive and also more cautious in how they submit proposals for consideration.

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anonymous shared this idea · October 06, 2009 · Flag idea as inappropriate… · Admin →

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Boof commented · November 10, 2009 13:26 · Flag as inappropriate · Delete

Bad idea. The contract type should be fairly easy to determine on most contracts. Eval teams have a hard time making a logical decision without making it even more complicated. Also the more complicated it is to evaluate, the greater the chance of protests. Due to a few companies wanting to protest every little detail, we have to make evals very consistant and as simple as possible.
hyodent commented · October 08, 2009 13:06 · Flag as inappropriate · Delete

The initial evaluation would be to the comprehensibility of understanding the requirement(s), objective(s), technical approach, and projected plan. From there the Government can enter into discussions for clarification and issues related to the companies’ capabilities and understanding. Concurrently the Government can conduct a cost and price review of either a FFP, T&M, and CP type for realism and reasonableness. The award determination would be best value considering the elements of risk associated with the contract type as well as the inclusion of the respective FAR/DFARs clauses associated with the contract type. Comparing the risks between contract types is not that difficult given the guidance already available per the FAR and the contractor having to make the case as to why its proposed contract type would be the most effective (address reporting, EVMS, change management, etc.) The timeline would still be shorter than what we currently see on acquisitions, the competition more stringent and innovative, and a greater probability of success as the company would be more conversant with the contract type. Its more like a competitive alpha acquisition process.
richard kahn commented · October 08, 2009 06:34 · Flag as inappropriate · Delete

How do you evaluate a FFP approach againstt a cost approach (even with a NTE)?

About the Better Buy Project/Frequently Asked Questions

Why the Federal Acquisition Process?

What Topics Are At Issue?

What Kind of Feedback Are You Looking For?

What Is Your Moderation Policy?

What Are The Terms Of Service And Privacy Policy?

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permit respondents to propose contract type(s)

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