Georgia Tech Procurement Assistance Center

Defense dominates experiment in streamlined bidding for innovation

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Streamlined solicitations for innovative commercial products and services, known as commercial solutions openings are beginning to take off in the Defense Department. Even the General Services Administration’s CSO service, which is open to all agencies for a fee, so far has been dominated by Defense users.

CSOs aren’t as well known or broadly used as their procurement-innovation cousin, other transaction authority, which gives agencies the ability to strike contracts outside the Federal Acquisition Regulation for research, prototypes and production to obtain technology from nontraditional defense contractors. Eleven agencies including Defense have OT authority.

GSA’s CSO holds the potential to bring civilian agencies, most of which don’t have OT authority, the ability to reach out to and select suppliers unencumbered by the Federal Acquisition Regulation. So far, civilian agencies haven’t been biting, but Pentagon organizations are, even though they have their own CSO provider.

The very first GSA CSO customer was none other than the Defense Innovation Unit, a once-experimental buying organization that invented CSOs. Originally designed to lure emerging companies to work for the Pentagon by easing the pain of federal procurement processes, the Defense Innovation Unit Experimental, or DIUx, lost the X last summer, when it was designated a permanent outpost for testing defense buying boundaries.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.govexec.com/excellence/management-matters/2019/03/defense-dominates-experiment-streamlined-bidding-innovation/155373/

Next NDAA might add more cyber provisions

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The next defense authorization bill could have a slew of new cyber provisions aimed at streamlining the Defense Department’s collaboration with the rest of government.

The House Armed Services Committee’s Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities released a markup of the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act on April 26 that includes a range of cyber provisions and recommendations focusing on expanding cyber forces, protecting critical infrastructure and consolidating cyber responsibilities.

Key provisions include:

  • Studying state cyber teams.
  • Protecting critical infrastructure with more hackathons.
  • Boosting breach notification requirements. 
  • Prioritizing tech needs at DOD installations.
  • Fully integrating DIUx’s Silicon Valley vibe into defense labs. 
  • Mapping cyber vulnerabilities in weapons systems. 
  • Cyber Command absorbing (some of) DISA’s responsibilities.

Read details on each of these provisions at: https://washingtontechnology.com/articles/2018/04/27/ndaa-markup-cyber.aspx

Company calls out ‘old guard’ after Pentagon cuts its $950 million cloud contract by 93 percent

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One week ago, Virginia-based REAN Cloud was preparing to hire an additional 100 employees to meet demand across the Defense Department after it received a $950 million other transaction authority agreement to provide cloud services across Defense agencies.

Now the company is calling out the contracting community that it feels helped successfully pressure the Pentagon to curb its contract award by more than 90 percent — from $950 million to $65 million — and looking for answers from the Defense Department.

“Based on the threat of legal action and protest by the old guard, the only winners in this delay are those large companies that stand to lose money if the Defense Department proceeds with innovation. In the meantime, the cost of maintaining antiquated government infrastructure has not subsided,” said Sekhar Puli, the company’s managing partner, in a statement.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.nextgov.com/it-modernization/2018/03/company-calls-out-old-guard-after-pentagon-cuts-its-nearly-1-billion-cloud-contract/146529/

DIUx and DoD ‘other transaction’ prototype agreements: Fast track to DoD funding

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On February 7, 2018 the Department of Defense (DoD) awarded REAN Cloud a contract valued at up to $950 million to work with defense agencies to migrate existing applications to commercial cloud solutions. The award is of significant relevance to efforts currently underway in connection with the upcoming DoD Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure — or “JEDI” — procurement. However, the award is also important in a broader context in that it was issued as a follow-on production contract to an “other transaction” (OT) prototype agreement awarded on an expedited basis by DoD’s Defense Innovation Unit Experimental organization (DIUx). The award, therefore, reflects DoD’s increased comfort with issuing high-value production contracts following preliminary work with DIUx under OT prototype agreements.

In 2015, DoD founded DIUx to increase its access to technical innovations from nontraditional contractors. Defense contractors’ spend on research and development in the last decade has been adversely impacted by increasing budget cuts, protracted procurement cycles, and numerous government shutdowns. As a result, DoD has both needed and wanted access to cutting-edge technology in the commercial sector, but commercial companies with robust global markets have historically been wary of the significant compliance obligations that come with traditional defense procurements. DIUx is the Department’s attempt to contract with these innovators in a way that mimics the speed and terms of commercial transactions and significantly reduces compliance obligations.

Essential to the success of this approach is the use of OT agreements to govern DIUx transactions. According to recent congressional testimony, since it was established, DIUx has awarded 61 OT agreements totaling $145 million and averaging only 78 days from initial contact with a potential partner to signing an agreement. And, beginning in September of last year, DoD has followed some of those DIUx awards with follow-on production contracts. In addition to the recent $950 million award to REAN, DIUx has awarded two more production contracts together valued at up to more than $1 billion. Importantly, DoD can issue these high-value follow-on contracts without competition as long as competition was established for an initial DIUx OT award.

Recent efforts, therefore, suggest that DIUx, OT agreements, and follow-on production contracts are here to stay, and potential contractors of all sizes and sophistication should understand how they may impact the competitive landscape.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.natlawreview.com/article/diux-and-dod-other-transaction-prototype-agreements-fast-track-to-dod-funding

DoD wants more leeway in TINA sole-source cost and pricing requirements

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Ellen Lord, the Defense Department’s new undersecretary for acquisition, technology and logistics, appeared before the Senate two weeks ago to give her first progress report on the department’s implementation of congressional acquisition reform.

In passing, she made a new reform request of her own: a potentially-fundamental change to the way DoD handles sole-source procurements.

Since 1962, when Congress passed the Truth in Negotiations Act (TINA), the government has generally been required to demand that contractors provide it with their cost and pricing data when that company is the only bidder that can fulfill the military’s requirements. The rationale is that without a competition between vendors, the government needs some insight into its contractor’s actual costs to make sure it’s not getting gouged.

Keep reading this article at: https://federalnewsradio.com/dod-reporters-notebook-jared-serbu/2017/12/pentagon-wants-more-leeway-on-truth-in-negotiations-act/

 

Tech group calls on President-elect to assess IT vulnerabilities, lower acquisition barriers

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iticThe federal government needs to assess its IT infrastructure and address cybersecurity, modernization and assessment reform as equal, intertwined priorities, suggests the IT Alliance for Public Sector, a division of advocacy and policy organization for the Information Technology Industry Council.

In a letter sent to President-elect Donald Trump, ITAPS declares that its membership — which includes hardware, software, services and solutions companies — is dedicated to working with the new administration to improve government operations and efficiency and reduce wasteful spending on aging inventory. ITAPS hopes that a review of procurement regulations and workaround programs (Digital Services, 18F, DIUx, etc.) will ease barriers to acquiring commercial technologies.

“The federal government spent $80 billion on IT systems last year. Shockingly, 80 percent was spent maintaining costly, vulnerable IT systems that many American taxpayers would expect to see in a Smithsonian collection,” said ITAPS Senior Vice President for Public Sector Trey Hodgkins, who signed the letter to Trump.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.federaltimes.com/articles/tech-group-calls-on-trump-to-assess-it-vulnerabilities-lower-acquisition-barriers

See the full set of ITIC’s recommendations here: http://www.itic.org/dotAsset/b/b/bb2f1b1e-2a9a-4a8a-ad9a-7aa41a046e3d.pdf

Is the Pentagon’s innovation unit too cozy with Silicon Valley?

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pentagon-sealHouse lawmakers are worried the Defense Department’s new innovation unit is too Silicon Valley centric.

The Defense Innovation Unit Experimental, or DIUx, is a “helpful step” in bridging the worlds of traditional Defense procurement and small, innovative companies, according to the latest version of the annual Defense Authorization Act currently circulating on Capitol Hill.

But lawmakers on the Emerging Threats and Capabilities subcommittee are “concerned by the pinpoint focus on one geographic region,” according to the markup of the bill, which was approved April 21 by the subcommittee.

The bill even goes so far as to limit funding for unit until lawmakers’ concerns are addressed.

In the fiscal 2017 budget, the Pentagon requested $45 million for the innovation unit, which is headquartered in Silicon Valley.

The current version of the bill would keep a lid on about $9 million of that, until Defense officials provide Congress with concrete staffing plans; metrics for measuring the unit’s effectiveness; and how DoD plans to make sure the tech unit doesn’t conflict or overlap with similar projects undertaken by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or In-Q-Tel, the intelligence community’s technology investment arm.

Keep reading this article at: http://m.nextgov.com/defense/2016/04/pentagons-innovation-unit-too-cozy-silicon-valley/127731/

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