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Acquisition Next – Takeaways from the Fall 2022 Government Contracting Conference
On November 4th 2022, George Mason University and Defense Acquisition University hosted Acquisition Next - Fall 2022 Government Contracting Conference in Washington, DC. The conference organizers conducted 3 panel discussions and 2 fireside chats that featured many prominent acquisition experts, including:
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Ellen Lord, Vice-Chair of the PPBE Reform Commission
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Michael Brown, former Defense Innovation Chief
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Heidi Shyu, Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering
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Bill LaPlante, Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment
Government Contracting Workforce
Titled “Workforce Next,” the first panel focused on the government contracting workforce. Discussions ranged from exploring social, economic, and security impacts to competitive incentives to attract, retain, and train a capable workforce to meet mission need. Leadership attention must be spent on creating and executing a robust human capital strategy to ensure a vibrant workforce and culture is in place to exploit new acquisition authorities and technology.
Notable Discussion – What is the Cost of Bureaucratic Goo?
Panelists discussed how bureaucracy and red tape reward compliance and promote aversion to risk, resulting in low usage of newer NDAA authorities. Panelists also stated that complexity of rules creates unnecessary workload and tells employees they are not trusted. With the increase of remote work and virtual meetings, the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the government’s IT brittleness with latency and failures costing significant time and creating workforce frustration.
The bottom line? In the battle between accelerating toward innovation vs. meeting standards, acceleration is being throttled.
Small Business Innovation
The second panel tackled “What’s Next for Small Business Innovation,” with discussions about recent reauthorization of the Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer program (STTR) programs, and usage of Commercial Solutions Opening (CSO), Other Transaction Authorities (OTAs) and other procurement methods focused on businesses or institutions that have “not traditionally” done business with the U.S. Government.
Notable Points:
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Small businesses are risk takers and serve as an important innovation engine for our Nation.
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SBIR Phase III awards are critical to elevate Technology Readiness Levels (TRLs). It is those TRL increases that drive the potential of crossing the “Valley of Death” and into a Program of Record.
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Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Procurement Innovation Laboratory (PIL) is dedicated to shifting acquisition cultural from compliance focus to accelerated acquisition – many success stories provided.
PPBE Reform
During the third panel, Ellen Lord and Mike Brown discussed the major issues that prompted Congress to create the Commission on Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution (PPBE) Reform (e.g., failure of technology transition over the “valley of death” between experimental projects and programs of record).
Ms. Lord requested: “What we need are examples of where PPBE was used was used in a way that accelerated capability being fielded downrange.” She added: “Just as importantly, we need very concrete examples of where things went sideways. Because without actual scenarios, it is hard to have the proof point to really back-up recommended changes or to sort of foot stomp what’s right that we need to do more of.”
Panelists agreed that DoD needs to be “Fast Followers” by quickly adopting industry’s develop technology – which requires greater funding. In 1960, DoD R&D budget comprised 1/3 of worldwide R&D investment, but in 2022, DoD R&D budget comprises less than 2% of worldwide investment.
Another issue discussed is that current Program of Record flexibility within a dynamic environment is stifled, with 10,000 lines of budgeting items and the slow pace of reprogramming funding through politically-intensive processes. The current PPBE process lacks incentives to accelerate, and small acquisition needs to be managed differently.
Panelists suggested a move to a capability portfolio management process. Smaller numbers of budget lines would support a capability, and simpler reprogramming would increase agility and speed.
The closure of the INDOPACOM “Davidson Window” is approaching quickly. China is not going to wait. 2025+ is too far away for the U.S. to start gaining necessary acquisition speed and agility. Congress must act now on capability production and deployment.
PPBE Commission Updates
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The Commission is staffing, has merger office space and has met 12 times and is engaging with many acquisition experts in government, industry, and academia.
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The Commission’s interim report is scheduled to be released August 2023.
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The final report is planned for March 2024 release with the intent to influence the FY25 NDAA and defense appropriations bills.
R&D In an Era of Integrated Deterrence
Heidi Shyu led a fireside chat on the “Role of Research and Development in an Era of Integrated Deterrence.” She discussed the importance of an agile acquisition process to research and develop new technologies, networks, concepts of operations, and other enablers.
Shyu stated that there must be a clear pathway with funding for R&D efforts to transition into Program of Record, which would provide the ability for many small business technologies to successfully bridge the “Valley of Death”.
She cited DoD’s Smart Scholarship program as a success and need to scale. The program is for undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral students currently pursuing a degree in one of 21 STEM disciplines.
Other notable points and suggestions include:
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Multi-decade timelines to regain the clear overmatch to deter foreign aggression will not work.
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Use Red vs. Blue physics-based modeling and simulation to determine investment strategy; Look for leap ahead/asymmetric technologies.
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Rely on cross-functional teams for sharing of information across services, and be flexible to pivot with changing environments.
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Focus on the interdependency of technologies – these intersections provide great opportunities for new capabilities.
Bridging the Valley of Death
During a fireside chat with Bill LaPlante on the topic of “Bridging the Valley of Death," the discussion focused on how the Department of Defense is working to scale innovation efforts to meet the national security threats facing the United States.
He raised how the war in Ukraine has highlighted the significance of production capability and capacity. It’s strategically critical that U.S. supply chain begins an immediate resurgence from rare earth mining to mass production capability. Mass production capability is critical to support the high-end fight by getting systems to the warfighter at-scale. America cannot expect to win a war if its designs are produced overseas, and U.S. did itself a disservice by adopting a no- to low-production mentality over the last two decades.
For example: Stinger missiles stopped production in 2008, HIMARS missiles stopped production in 2012/2014, the Mark 48 torpedo stopped production in 1996, and the Tomahawk missile stopped production in 2003.
The good news? LaPlante stated that large, multi-year production contracts are coming!
