Contracting

In this report, the authors look back at history, noting that the Department of Defense (DoD) has made numerous attempts to reform its acquisition system over the last 50 years, but that these and similar reforms have pro­duced only modest improvements.

The Center for The Business of Government continues to support reports by leading thinkers on key issues affecting government today. We are pleased to announce our latest round of awards for new reports on key public sector challenges, which respond to priorities identified in the Center's long-term research agenda, see businessofgovernment.org/content/research-stipends. We expect the following reports to be published later in 2015. Short summaries of each report are included below.

 and Public Policy at Willamette University.

and Public Policy at Willamette University.

Post-Award Management of Agile Contracts. What happens after a contract is awarded? Steve Kelman writes in Federal Computer Week that there is “fear that some principles of agile cannot be reconciled with existing procurement regulations. I argued that good practice suggests, and the procurement regulations allow, issuing a solicitation for an agile contract, or a task order under an umbrella IDIQ contract, without specifying requirements at the beginning, which would violate the whole idea of agile.

As promised in an earlier blog post on this topic, the IBM Center now has a report, “Managing Innovation Prizes in Government,” by Luciano Kay, with the School of Public Policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

As announced by OMB last Thursday and widely reported since then, the Obama Administration has issued an implementation strategy for IT reform over the next 18 months.  Much attention has been focused on key elements of the plan, including using budget authority to change or stop major IT systems, incentives for modular development of technology, improved communications among stakeholders across government and with industry and the establishment of program management as a profession; I

Blog Co-Authors:  Tim Cooke, CEO of ASI Government and Steve Kelman, Weatherhead Professor of Public Management at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government.