The other day, someone said to me: "Hey, Dan, how is the BetterBuy Project like legendary recording artist Bruce Springsteen?"

"Simple," I replied. "You haven't really experienced it until you've seen it live!"

Happily, your chance to really experience the BetterBuy Project has arrived! The next executive session of the Industry Advisory Committee, one of the project's key sponsors, will feature the founders of BetterBuy live and in person, discussing the project and answering your questions about it. Here's the event info:

We are pleased to announce the next IAC Executive Session featuring The BetterBuy Project on December 16th, 2009 from 9:00am - 11:00am at The National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA), 900 7th Street, N.W., Suite 600, Washington, DC 20001. The BetterBuy Project, a collaborative initiative with GSA, ACT-IAC and the National Academy for Public Administration (NAPA), has become front page news and has captured the imaginations of both government and industry acquisition professionals. Come and learn more about this dynamic project and how it could dramatically change - for the better - the way the government buys products and services. BetterBuy Panelists:

• Chris Dorobek, Managing Editor of FederalNewsRadio.com and Co- Anchor of the afternoon Federal News Radio program (Moderator)
• Mary Davie, Assistant Commissioner of GSA's Office of Assisted Acquisition Services
• Peter Tuttle, Senior Procurement Policy Analyst with Distributed Solutions, Inc.
• Chris Hamm, Operations Director of GSA's Federal Systems Integration and Management Center (FEDSIM)
• Esther Burgess, SVP and Deputy COO of Vistronix, Inc.
• Lena Trudeau, Director of Strategic Initiatives for the National Academy for Public Administration (NAPA)

IAC Executive Sessions are great opportunities for IAC members to meet with key government executives and gain a first-hand understanding of the organization's plans, issues, and challenges. This event is on the record.

We hope you can join us for this great event. Register now!

Note: The following was also posted on Huffington Post, SF Chronicle, and Craig's personal blog You can also follow Craig on Twitter.

We're seeing something new from Washington, sites which are being used to help figure out how to better serve citizens.

Toward that ends we're seeing sites used to get ideas as to how to run agencies better, and how to improve fundamental processes involved in areas like acquisition, the purchase of the stuff people need to do their job. Some innovation sites are internal, focusing on ideas from the rank and file that management needs to hear about. Some innovation sites are outward-facing, trying to figure out how better to work with the public.

The American Council for Technology/Industry Advisory Council, the National Academy for Public Administration and GSA have launched the BetterBuy Project. The focus is on how our government can do a better job of buying stuff needed to serve the country.

Their blog has an explanation, in brief:

The federal government spends approximately $530 billion annually on the acquisition of a wide range of goods and services to meet mission needs, and the acquisition process represents one of the most important and complex areas of collaboration between government and the private sector. As demand increases, the complexity of what program managers need and what acquisition officials are buying has also increased. Government acquisition officials are being asked to do more with fewer resources. To provide the government with the goods and services it needs, the private sector is faced with an equally complex and challenging environment. Think of the hundreds of thousands of buys the government makes each year and the demand on the private sector to respond to those requests.

The BetterBuy Project team believes that we can increase transparency and openness in the process, potentially reducing costs to both the government and private sector, ultimately allowing government to deliver more value to taxpayers through the use of collaborative technologies. This vision, coupled with encouragement from the Obama Administration for federal agencies to use emerging social media platforms to share information and generate discussion on key issues, resulted in this collaborative effort between the General Services Administration, the American Council for Technology and Industry Advisory Council and the National Academy of Public Administration.

Our success depends on your ideas and support as we test those ideas.

In a few moments, GSA's Mary Davie and the National Academy of Public Administration's Lena Trudeau will be holding a press conference on the BetterBuy Project from the 2009 Executive Leadership Conference. They'll be discussing how the project works, what we hope to gain from it, and how all this stuff is actually making government better. Assuming all the A/V stuff works out, we'll be live-tweeting the whole thing! Follow @betterbuyproj or follow the whole event at #elc09.

Update: Schedules being what they are, we're now slated to start a bit after 4:30. Sorry for the delay!

Update 2: Via the excellent GovCon (@GovCon), here's a very cool live twitter stream of the ELC action: The livestream has been moved below the fold, along with a transcript of our livetweets. Thanks for playing along!

Thanks for checking out the BetterBuy Project. The federal government spends approximately $530 billion annually on the acquisition of a wide range of goods and services to meet mission needs, and the acquisition process represents one of the most important and complex areas of collaboration between government and the private sector. As demand increases, the complexity of what program managers need and what acquisition officials are buying has also increased. Government acquisition officials are being asked to do more with fewer resources. To provide the government with the goods and services it needs, the private sector is faced with an equally complex and challenging environment. Think of the hundreds of thousands of buys the government makes each year and the demand on the private sector to respond to those requests.

The BetterBuy Project team believes that we can increase transparency and openness in the process, potentially reducing costs to both the government and private sector, ultimately allowing government to deliver more value to taxpayers through the use of collaborative technologies. This vision, coupled with encouragement from the Obama Administration for federal agencies to use emerging social media platforms to share information and generate discussion on key issues, resulted in this collaborative effort between the General Services Administration, the American Council for Technology and Industry Advisory Council and the National Academy of Public Administration.

Our success depends on your ideas and support as we test those ideas. We are excited by the thought that we'll encounter some new and unfamiliar territory. We'll keep you posted on what we're doing and how it's going throughout the process. You'll also hear from our contributing bloggers who will provide their thoughts, insights and experiences throughout our journey.

Thanks again for your help!

Hello and welcome to BetterBlog, the official blog of the BetterBuy Project! I'm Dan Munz, and I'll be your host-slash-webmaster here on this site.

As you know (or can find out by reading our FAQ), BetterBuy is a project dedicated to surfacing innovative ideas for making federal acquisition more open, participatory, collaborative -- and, ultimately, making government an efficient and effective customer. My organization, the National Academy of Public Administration, is part of the BetterBuy team because we believe that, as our President Jenna Dorn often puts it, "none of us is as smart as all of us." Federal acquisition is an area of government that could really benefit from some fresh eyes. We're seeking ideas not only from those who oversee the federal acquisition process, but from experts who study it, as well as the real customers of the acquisition process -- the federal agencies and vendors who have to navigate it.

We're collecting those ideas over at our main site, a nifty little web portal where you can suggest ideas, discuss them, and vote on the best ones so that they rise to the top. The coolest thing about this all, in my humble opinion, is that we're not all talk; as part of this project, GSA (in particular, the truly awesome Mary Davie) will actually pilot some of the best ideas on real, living, breathing acquisitions. This, my friends, is government 2.0 in action.

Our recipe on this blog is simple: One part transparency, two parts great ideas, shake vigorously. This is the place where you can follow along as we select, implement, and report on how the selected ideas are really turning out and what lessons we're learning along the way. We'll also be inviting a whole bunch of exciting guest-bloggers - from renowned experts on federal acquisition to new leaders in the world of "government 2.0" - to share their perspectives and ideas about making the acquisition process more open and accessible.

So take some time to explore the blog, click around - and, more importantly, to head to BetterBuy and share or vote on some great ideas - and check back often as we document the process of making federal acquisition more transparent, less complex, and, well...just plain better.