Page 30 - Federal Computer Week, May/June 2019

Commentary|BY ALAN CHVOTKIN is executive vice president and counsel at the
Professional Services Council.
Innovation and risk: Not an inseparable pair
Modernization strategies that enable a broad spectrum of companies to compete for contracts can increase innovation while reducing risk
The U.S. government cannot afford to keep allocating more than 75 percent of agency IT spending to the operation and maintenance of exist- ing, often aging systems. Much of that legacy IT was developed using now-outdated methodologies — a situation that creates unnecessary cyber vulnerabilities. However, the solution is not to simply replace old equipment with shiny new stuff.
One of the major impediments to IT modernization is the acquisition process itself. Solicitations for mod- ernization services must be updated to mitigate risk and help IT-enabled enterprise transformation take hold.
New acquisition strategies can give federal agencies broader access to commercial capabilities and talent. The growing use of “other transaction authority” agreements, which are exempt from most of
the laws and regulations that apply to Federal Acquisition Regulation- based contracts, indicates that some agencies are already changing their “go to market” strategies. But OTA is still mostly a niche tool that not all agencies have the authority to use. Agencies’ increasing emphasis on governmentwide acquisition con- tracts and “best in class” contract vehicles, such as One Acquisition Solution for Integrated Services and Alliant 2, highlights another strategy for delivering efficiencies and inno- vative solutions for IT acquisitions.
But there are several improve- ments that agencies and the General Services Administration should make to increase competition and
leverage the government’s buying power while also reducing risk dur- ing IT modernization initiatives.
1. New contract vehicles should be considered for IT modernization. And they should focus on solutions or methods (e.g., DevSecOps) or new technology areas (e.g., robotic process automa- tion or distributed ledger technol-
Solicitations for modernization services must be updated to mitigate risk and help IT- enabled enterprise transformation take hold.
ogy) to increase government access to potential vendors with relevant capabilities.
2. The structure of procure- ments should not unduly dis- advantage firms that primarily serve commercial customers. Agencies can attract more new entrants by minimizing requirements for unique administrative systems for accounting, procurement and pricing.
3. Past-performance criteria should go beyond federal
IT projects. Such a narrow
focus can limit agencies’ access
to potential offerors that have applicable private-sector expertise and state-of-the-art solutions. Instead, evaluation criteria should permit the assessment of potential vendors’ commercial expertise and delivery risk based on independent industry evaluators such as Gartner or Forrester Research. Similarly, agencies should accept commercial customer references, with appropriate documentation standards and past-performance evidentiary “forms.”
4. Agencies should use demon- strations for IT acquisitions more frequently. That approach allows offerors to show their capabilities or solutions rather than just describe them in a written proposal. The exer- cise could involve hosting demon- stration days, establishing a series of technical milestones before awarding a contract, or incorporating techni- cal demonstrations or development challenges as part of formal proposal evaluation criteria during the acquisi- tion process. Those practices are becoming common in commercial source selection.
Accelerating agencies’ IT mod- ernization is essential for reducing cybersecurity risks and delivering better mission outcomes across government. Agencies can increase access to commercial innovation and reduce program risk by ensur- ing that their “go to market” strate- gies for IT modernization encourage and enable a broad spectrum of companies to compete. n
ALAN CHVOTKIN
30 May/June 2019 FCW.COM