Hello all-

Sincere thanks to GSA for the opportunity to make our first post in this space.

Upon seeing the BetterBuy initiative mature and bloom into two very real pilot opportunities, we were faced with a challenge:

How can we craft effective RFI/RFQ/RFP Responses that balance transparency with our obligations to privacy?

In order to avoid shareholder lawsuits, public companies are required to guard corporate assets which can include a company's trade secret assets and other proprietary information such as, clients (i.e., past performance), project methodologies that create competitive advantage, detailed pricing data and more. Each of these items is probably key to include in a winning RFQ/RFP response and/or a persuasive RFI response.

In an age where technology can facilitate a full RFI/RFQ/RFP response in an online Wiki, how can we maintain an environment that allows public companies to respond to BetterBuy's Wiki-style Requests without this legal risk? We wanted to bid, but we wondered whether a public company might face that built-in obstacle that private organizations might not. Did other organizations have similar challenges?

Thanks again for the opportunity, and we look forward to sharing additional observations and lessons learned soon.

Let me first apologize to Andy Krzmarzick, as I have been promising a post on performance-based contracting and how it relates to the Better Buy Project and the Acquisition 2.0 initiative. I actually started that post, but put in on hold a bit as I found something of interest that I have also been meaning to discuss.

At the Better Buy Project forum at the National Association of Public Administration (NAPA) last December, I was discussing with Mary Davie of the General Services Administration the need to reform not only acquisition, but the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) itself. We both commented that we often get curious looks when we mention this in conversation, but part of the rebuilding of the acquisition mission is to look at the FAR, as it seems ripe for an overhaul. In fact, the FAR can be fertile ground for change, and that change can certainly be done under the umbrella of Acquisition 2.0 tools and methodologies, much like performance-based contracting.

The FAR, in my opinion, has become a snake-pit of over-regulation; a maze of parochial interest. As lawmakers turned to help constituencies and thus narrow interests, or through well-meaning yet poorly planned and poorly though out policy, the current FAR is an example of simply how not to conduct world-class buying.

I was revisiting a wonderful piece of common sense approaches to reform by the Procurement Roundtable (PRT) that are very relevant to the current transformation discussion, not to mention illustrative of how difficult reform can be as the report is dated December, 1999.

The recommendation regarding policy guidance I believe to be spot on, and concur with the PRT that the way forward is much less regulation and far fewer detailed procurement laws. The reform process would work in an Acquisition 2.0 construct, where mission and broad policy statements commence the process of the final outcome; a digital, e-procurement guidance or FAR 2.0.

Under FAR 2.0, guidance should focus on outcomes and mission by concentrating on National or agency goals and objectives. This guidance would not be regulation, and would certainly not be details about how to perform the mission.

The next step is recreating FAR 2.0 would be a crowd sourcing initiative, much like the Better Buy Project. The acquisition community would be able to comment on eliminating the redundancy and over-regulation, focus on commercial best practices, and eliminate those existing statutes, agency regulations, and other directives that burden procurement and detail how to perform the mission. This approach is what the PRT referred to as a "zero-based" approach; which is to start with a blank sheet and add only what can be thoroughly justified.

Further input would of course be proposals for re-creating and streamlining the buying process, changing the new FAR to make it a "what, not how" model of world-class procurement. The rule for streamlining and creating FAR 2.0 would be to follow those commercial processes that allow for a fair and open acquisition process, and allow for real transparency and accountability to the taxpayer. This new process would be based on constant innovation; eliminating and revising any existing guidance or policy that does not allow for the leveraging of new information technology. The goal is to build an acquisition process for the 21st century, and executed by a right-sized and blended 21st century acquisition workforce with the right skills and capabilities to leverage this new process.

Not an easy task, no doubt. However, recognizing the institutional challenges that have hampered reform in the past are the first areas to attack by change agents and leaders who claim to want real, meaningful reform, and who are also demanding accountability and transparency. Some agencies will continue claiming uniqueness, and Congress may the biggest obstacle. However, the Acquisition 2.0 forum and the collaborative nature of this FAR 2.0 initiative can use the successes and lessons learned from Better Buy to involve all the concerned stakeholders, including the organizations that published the overly prescriptive guidance and have legitimacy to claims of uniqueness. Only by taking risks and exploring innovative ideas can we expect to see change that matters.

In my earlier post, I commented on the "risk averse" nature of government acquisition. In our efforts to be fair to all, the manuals that we use grow longer and longer (e.g., the Federal Acquisition Regulations, supplemental Agency Regulations, Acquisition Policies, GAO decisions). This is an environment that has not embraced change and new technology, and for good reason.

When I asked around my office for volunteers to work on the pilot, not a lot of hands went up. A few brave souls eventually snuck over to my office to learn more, and finally we formed a team. We have a Contracting Officer, a Contract Specialist, a Project Manager, a few Technical Advisors, and an Acquisition Project Manager who will have to pull all of this together. Hopefully, I'll get to help steer all of this along without disrupting the rest of the organization's daily operations.

We spent the last two months evaluating the recommendations on BetterBuy, identifying the ideas that were feasible to implement, and working with our information technology support personnel to set up the infrastructure properly. We met with OMB, GAO, and other parts of GSA to discuss best practices for open collaboration, making decisions about things like user registration and authentication, roles and responsibilities for team members (e.g., who controls our twitter account, who can post). We are nearly ready with our wiki site for requirements definition. This process shines a bright light on established procedures and forces everyone to consider the value of the activity. Fun times!

My office (GSA FEDSIM) primarily works with other Federal Agencies on their procurements, but we also support a few internal GSA customers as well. We have been talking to these internal customers as the most likely candidates for the pilot project(s). We have two in our sights. Both are working with new technology and align well with the increased transparency through BetterBuy. We plan on launching the pilot in February, so stay tuned. . . . .

To date, the BetterBuy Project (BBP) has generated some superb input about ways to improve the federal acquisition process using Web 2.0 and social media technologies, as well as some other ideas on how to "fix" the process. I've summarized the main themes of BBP and categorized the ideas that have been generated thus far in keeping with the project themes: Openness, Collaboration and Transparency.

1) OPENNESS: Raise awareness of upcoming needs government is trying to fulfill, in order to assemble a pool of qualified providers who can compete on specific requirements.

Information Sharing. A number of respondents suggested methods for sharing information across organizations and agencies within the government. The formation of searchable information repositories containing results of market research, common contractual language, RFQ's and best practices appeared to be the common denominator amongst various participants. Often, it is difficult for acquisition professionals to search for and find information that would be useful in developing/executing their specific acquisition when looking across a single federal enterprise or government-wide.

2) COLLABORATION: Find ways for the government to engage in more 'open' conversations with the private sector on topics such as best practices, emerging technologies and innovations, and market conditions.

Collaborative requirements generation. Participants suggested that social media technology, such as wikis, be used to enhance the collaboration of process stakeholders, such as Integrated Project Teams, to develop the content of evaluation criteria, requirements documents, performance work statements, etc. There was recognition that collaboration between government-only participants behind federal firewalls would require different business rules and constraints than those collaboration efforts which also engaged industry and other non-federal players.

3) TRANSPARENCY: Give the public and interested parties timely data on upcoming and ongoing buying activities, with the goal of promoting fair and high-quality competitions.

Communications. A number of ideas were presented that would enhance the federal government's transparency and external communications with the vendor community during the solicitation process. Use of social media technology, including Twitter, live video streams, webinars, RSS feeds, and on-line chats could be used to supplement (perhaps in time replace) existing communications mechanisms to increase participation and reduce costs in the solicitation process. Several specific ideas included using Twitter to inform vendors of (proposal processing) status and using webinars for pre-proposal conferences or industry days.

Additionally, a number of suggestions indicated some level of frustration with the overall federal acquisition process, but did not directly address how Web 2.0 or social media technologies could be used to improve the process. This being said, these comments are valuable and add to the growing body of knowledge concerning the challenges being faced by today's acquisition professionals. These comments should be discussed and/or addressed by appropriate levels of leadership within the federal government.

I welcome other opinions on the above categorizations, especially if you have a different viewpoint. It's important as we move forward with this project that we understand the focus areas and the value statement of these areas contribute to improving the acquisition process for not only the practitioners, but the ultimate customer - the taxpayer.