Federal agencies are changing the way they structure IT contracts, asking for more proof-of-concept and capability up front instead of basing decisions on a portfolio of past work.

“We’re increasingly seeing requests for proposals, and what the RFP is asking for is, instead of a written response, show up with a team and deploy a product by the end of the day,” said Charles Onstott, senior vice president and chief technology officer at SAIC, in an interview with Federal Times. “What that challenge is demonstrating is your ability to do that, and then that would lead to follow-on work.”

To meet the new contracting requirements, SAIC in October 2018 created its Innovation Factory, a component of the company that relies on innovative and fast working teams of IT professionals to meet current contract requirements, prepare to bid on potential contracts and experiment with new products.

“We launched this really in response to some of the major trends that we’re seeing in the federal government, and one of them is to do app modernization, but to do it rapidly in an incremental delivery fashion,” said Onstott.

“The other is [the Department of Defense’s] push to do more agile across DoD, agile acquisition.”

Keep reading this article at: https://www.federaltimes.com/it-networks/2019/02/27/how-one-company-changed-to-meet-new-it-contract-styles/