Why Care About How the Government Spends on Technology?

Everyday taxpayer dollars are collected and spent on numerous goods and services.  As a consumer, I care about and want to know that prudence, consideration and good judgment  is exercised when each and every dollar is spent.  Why?  Taxes that’s why.  The more the Government spends, the more it will collect from citizens like you and me.  Resonate yet?

The Government spends billions of dollars on technology on an annual basis.  Tech spending is only going to increase due to its rapidly changing characteristics.  As such, public support of practices that allow the Government to refine its requirements prior to making significant investments of public dollars is essential to change in Government tech spending.

Through market research and in partnership with the Small Business Administration’s Business Development program, federal agencies can contract with a capable small business on a sole source basis for the development of an Analysis of Alternatives (AoA) to address an overarching problem statement and subsequently, the development of a minimum viable product (MVP) for a small fraction of the cost usually spent.  Once the requirement becomes fully defined, it can then competitively solicit the requirement for full development and or implementation. This method allows for discovery and refinement of unknown variables in the Government’s vast technology requirements before forging full steam ahead on a wing and a prayer, fueled by taxpayer dollars, on a journey into the wholly or partially unknown.  This way if the initiative fails, it fails small and costs little as opposed to a large debacle akin to the Healthcare.gov epic fail.

Based on this tenet, having already received an AoA, the best approach for the COWSS replacement is to move forward with a directed 8(a) contract/order to a vendor based on the following factors for evaluation:

SOO based RFP for MVP:

Factor 1: Technical Approach

• The Government will assess the offeror’s proposed Performance Work Statement (PWS) to the extent that it achieves the objectives of the SOO and delivers the selected approach in the AoA.
• The Government will assess the offeror’s understanding of the agile methodology to include how it addresses backlog, develops sprint length, and measures success against its definition of done.
• The Government will assess the offeror’s ability to apply its methodology and address the conditions of the pre-defined Use Case.
• The Government will assess the offeror’s proposed acceptance criteria to the extent that it validates that the functionality being developed meets the objectives of the SOO.

Factor 2: Key Personnel and Project Staffing

• The Government will assess the offeror’s approach to key personnel to the extent that it has a clear rationale for the proposed positions and is relevant to the offeror’s proposed technical approach.
• The Government will assess the offeror’s approach to staffing sprint teams, and will assess the rationale for its building its sprint team to achieve the objectives of the SOO.

Factor 3: Relevant Experience

The Government will assess the Offeror’s relevant experience and do an evaluation of how it aligns to its technical approach and the objectives outlined in the SOO. Offerors shall include information for five (5) contracts that cover the most recent/current requirements (within the last three years) that are similar in scope and complexity to this requirement. Of the relevant experience projects, two must be submitted by the prime contractor acting as a prime. The remaining projects may be submitted on behalf of the team.

 

 

18F Solicitation Insights

In general, I agree with the tenet of less is more whenever possible.  As long as you are able to properly evaluate the submissions and have the submissions yield meaningful and substantive results, I have no problem with a succinctly written solicitation .  The attachments made the solicitation a bit longer than the 18 pages that it initially appeared to be.  It seems as if Industry agrees based on the posted feedback.  Use of external repository systems (e.g. GitHub) and Google forms was innovative,and easy to leverage.  The evaluation factors were apropos to the requirement.  The technical factors were robust and meaningful, but would require the technical expertise of a fitting technical adviser in order to evaluate the submissions properly.  The solicitation used the word “approximately” when detailing the number of BPAs it intended to award under the respective pools thereby not defining an actual concrete min or max number.  This adds flexibility for awarding more if truly innovative vendors emerged or less if many of the submissions failed to demonstrate adequately the required technical expertise.

Use Complementary Skills to Make the Most of Your Government Procurement Team

To increase meaningful ownership and stakeholder buy-in among those in the procurement field, you must stop looking for superhuman perfection and establish teams with complementary skills. Finding an employee that is considered to be the “perfect package” i.e. hard working, team player, technically skilled, honest and loyal, etc. is like trying to find a unicorn. The formation of Procurement teams is the answer. Government procurement offices have made minimal progress in their efforts to assess and utilize resources in a way that maximizes respective skill sets and, thereby, making the compilation more strategic in nature. For example, according to poll results published on the Virtual Acquisition Office, only a small percentage work in teams which have all of the competencies needed for this strategic approach. So it’s clear that many functions have a long way to go and, likely, procurement offices will need to begin at the most basic level to progress.

Of the procurement managers polled, only 25% said that they delegate work to employees based on their strengths and aspirations. Procurement executives should first identify the strengths and weaknesses of their respective employees and then assess how profound the strengths and weaknesses are. Only then, can complementary procurement teams be effectively assembled. Procurement managers should use their knowledge of employee strengths and weaknesses to place them in the roles that suit them best, making sure they have someone skilled at each competency on their team. They can also base development plans on these results.

The payoff for all this work is that when procurement employees are in teams where they can make use of their individual strengths, they are almost twice as likely to demonstrate strategic performance as those who are not. As the function’s role in the business changes, Procurement needs these new strategic skills to succeed. This change will also most assuredly have a positive impact on  the overall goal of producing cost savings. i.e. employees with strategic capabilities will generate more savings than individuals with only a tactical focus.