Agencies hold funds until the end of the year and make rash, rushed, and poorly planned procurements. The shortened lead time leads to higher cost, inadequate competition, and an inability to coduct procurements in an effective manner. If OMB really wants to improve processes, they should start there, and prohibit agency spending in the fourth quarter that exceeds the spending in the first two quarters. With adequate procurement lead time, procurement processes will improve.

You are starting too late in the game. Improving acquisition begins with adequately trained personnel. The move toward education of procurement personnel is a good one, but they can't even put their training information into the electronic acquisition career management system (ACMIS) because it does not work correctly. Fix that. Begin at the beginning please.

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 opportunity to adequately use those bona fides. A Performance Work Statement simply identifies the expected capabilities and capacity of the end product and allows the contractor to use its ingenuity to meet or exceed the outcome expectations. A sequential performance evaluation matrix is created, aligned with the key elements in the WBS, to ensure the contractor stays on course for a successful outcome. In that way, the contractor shares the risk of performance with the government and the government has the opportunity to receive the latest technical expertise and a better product.

Year end spending is often driven by a lack of planning when it's hard to take a long-term perspective. The agencies are often put in a box because Congress is always looking at the short-term election cycle and posturing for their personal agendas. Therefore, funding isn't approved until half way through the fiscal year which results in the "rush to spend."

...pursue a commitment from Congress to allow agencies to "bank" any portion of their budget not spent by August 31st of each fiscal year. This would avoid purchases made at year end just because the agency wants to spend all their money. For years, agencies have assumed, and our Program Managers and Contracting Officers have been told, that Congress will reduce next year's budget for the agency if every dime is not spent by midnight on September 30th. In addition to the stress and overtime required to accommodate this flurry of spending, this process does not help the morale of the Acquisition Workforce, it results in unnecessary "requirements," and funnels even more money into cost-plus vehicles. Instead, Congress or OMB should REWARD those agencies who save money at the end of the year, by allowing them to roll the "leftover" money into the following fiscal year, or to "bank" it for future emergencies. See how much money is spent by our agencies during the months of August and September of each year, and you will see the pattern. The last 30-60 days of the year are not time enough to award fully competitive contracts for the "extra" funds, so the cost-plus contracts or schedules are used for most of those last-minute purchases, which is just what the current Administration is trying to avoid.

The first thing I do when I have to issue a new RFQ is look for someone that has recently had a similar requirement so I can use their SOW and technical requirements as a template. So much effort is wasted on writing and rewriting statements of work, getting SMEs to provide technical specs - all for something that has already been purchased by the government probably numerous times. How many RFQs for web hosting services have been written - does each have to be a completely new effort?

This would be as easy as taking the publicly available RFQs and depositing them into a cloud storage solution and making them searchable. Eventually, you could even have ratings from government personnel or even vendors on the quality of the RFQs in the repository.

When the government revokes unused funding at the end of each year instead of allowing it to roll over, it fosters poor financial stewardship of tax dollars (i.e. contractors find a place to spend the money so they don't lose it).

Allow contractors' budgets/funding to roll over year after year (especially on R&D type projects), and revise after a true baseline is established.

Steve Kelman wrote in a recent FCW article (read it here http://tinyurl.com/ycl4czc ) "Agencies should involve vendors by using draft requests for proposals and other communications to solicit suggestions for changes in agency requirements that would enable significant cost savings without sacrificing much in the way of quality. As an incentive for good suggestions, agencies should give vendors evaluation credit in their proposals for having presented such suggestions earlier."

Federal agencies use different electronic procurement systems, such as AMS's Procurement Desktop and Compusearch PRISM. There's a plethora of them out there. It takes lots of time to train specialists on the use of new systems when they move from one agency to another. Imagine a world where the new contract specialist could simply log on and start using the same system because they knew how it worked. All agencies should use the same software for procurement.

The FAR and DFAR have been customized for each department (AFAR, NFAR, etc.) such that specialists are needed to write SOW / PWS for each department / sub-component and then for each sub-specialty – commodity, service, construction. Contractors are generally asked to provide a white paper to government who then forward the text as a SOW / PWS. The requesting activity should know enough about its needs to write a decent SOW / PWS with feedback from an experienced KO. To short circuit this self-promoting cycle you need well educated staff and KOs who are working under consistent policies / processes. The first steps are: common laws, common policies, common procedures and education / training of KO and staff. A common, simply worded, FAR is needed – with copious examples. Modification of contracting regulations below the federal department level should not be allowed. Web 2.0 and other technologies could then be applied to the common end to end process, thereby increasing visibility, quality and, in theory, reducing workload. Tools can help by providing knowledge of and access to existing contract vehicles, research or responses to RFIs / RFPs so that duplicate contracting efforts are reduced and best efforts are highlighted as examples to the community (separately suggested here).

Recently a draft format for interagency agreements was distributed, and everyone agreed that it was a disaster. It was extremely lengthy and included many unncessary sections for most agencies. And was an uneditable form! It was a waste of paper, and no agency wanted to use it. How about using collaboration, preferably restricted to Government personnel who actually have familiarily with IAAs, to design a format for IAAs, similar to the wiki that is being used to design a solicitation?

Once FY budget request has left the agency, procurement officials need to comb through the requests to identify high dollar programs which can benefit from acquisition planning. Once identified, the aspects of competition, contract type and contract management would be address at a high level with the agency "customer." This would promote the submission of a written acquisition plan (FAR requirement) prior to the FY which funds the requirement. While some may never get funded, the exercise will educate the agency personnel. If funds do become available, the vetted acquisition plan would greatly assist the Contracting Officer bothe during the procurement and after award.

We are being forced into FFP contracts on IT projects, and they increase the costs to the gov't (contrary to popular opinion). Contactors increase their costs at the outset due to the "risk" they're assuming, and yet there is no flexibility to adapt to changing requirements/new technology without modifying the contract. A project manager/COTR that is actively involved/managing gets a better product via a T&M contract.