THE DIGITAL SERVICES APOCALYPSE IS UPON US
“Starting in 2022 all digital service purchases over $7 million will require the focused expertise of a contracting officer specialized in digital service acquisition.”1. With 2022 a few years away and no immediate desire to become a Contracting Officer (CO) again… why am I balancing a full-time job with a full-time course that is equivalent to many online college courses I have had in the past? To me, the answer is two-fold, but simple; first, I was told I had no choice, but second, I strive to find that occasional box to check on my resume that tells a future employer why I am better than the rest of their candidates… to me, it makes me marketable.
In order to write, compete, and award a digital service, you need a team trained on how to do so – while the opening statement is not, in fact, inaccurate, it fails to accurately paint the picture as a whole. When you get down to it, though the goal of the Federal Acquisition Certification in Contracting Core-Plus Specialization in Digital Services (FAC-C-DS) training is to ensure that the workforce consists of CO’s specialized in digital service acquisitions, it is well known that it is not the CO’s doing the market research, writing the acquisition plan, re-writing the acquisition package, etc.; it is the Contact Specialist (CS). While the CO is the name behind the final product and the approver of all that is written, they need a trained specialist in front of them ensuring it is done well enough to be granted their digital stamp of approval.
This brings me to why I am here… to ensure that the CO’s appointed above me can act in their full capacity, with full confidence, that we are consistently on the same page and driven to the same digital service end goals. While no single CO or CS is working to reform the future of the Veterans Affairs (VA) all alone, we all must take our individual steps in preserving its future; without being left behind in the dust of technology’s steady and unyielding advancements…. Or so we think.
PREPARING FOR THE APOCALYPSE THAT NEVER SHOWS
“Digital technology is the same revolution as adding sound to pictures and the same revolution as adding color to pictures. Nothing more and nothing less.”
-George Lucas.
Procurement has been occurring longer than anyone alive and will continue long after all of us are but vague memories. It was inevitable that we would reach the age of digital technology and services… and now we must prepare. By continuing to endorse and send VA procurement professionals (to include CO’s, CS’s., and hopefully Project Managers in very near future) through Digital IT Acquisition Professional (DITAP) training, the VA is already taking the first steps required to ensure that we meet the future with open arms as the government’s digital transformation becomes fully realized. How far do we need to open our arms you ask? Just enough to let high level management see that we have this under control. Nothing will change, aside from some policy letters, reference material, and wording within the same, proven, acquisition package documents. Instead of saying we want the best price for something, we will have the option to be shown the best product. Instead of saying “we want to read pages and pages of what you say your product can do”, we will have the option to say, “show me”.
Once the initial shock and awe wears off, many professionals (who have not fled to program management jobs) will see that sun still rises and the work still gets done… we just have a few more options on how we get it there now. Much of the training to this point may not make the most sense quite yet, but this is because there has been so little that many have not yet had the opportunity to make use of what we have learned thus far. It is easy to be scared of the unknown, but once digital services finally step into the light, we will all be able to laugh at what it really looks like and will press on. I hope, once fully certified and actually working on digital services, that I can help those around me see this new challenge in the same light. We are training for the future well in advance (proactively and not reactively for a change!) and will be ready to carry the VA mission forward.
1 Traci Walker and Joanie Newhart, “The Newest Breed of Federal Acquisition Professional: The Digital Specialist,” Medium, accessed May 06, 2019, https://medium.com/the-u-s-digital-service/the-newest-breed-of-federal-acquisition-professional-the-digital-specialist-48a3dda73d71
Digital IT Acquisition Professional (DITAP) Program Blog 