Better Buy is Like Best Ball in Golf. Try it…It’s fun and rewarding.

For those of you who don’t know what Best Ball is, let me explain. In a foursome (4 golfers playing against other groups of 4). The golfers hit off the tee and the ball that travels the farthest and lands closets to the pin, is the ball that the group uses to hit the next ball. This goes on until the ball lands in the hole. The score of the group is the result of a group effort and is led by the best balls hit by the golfers.

I thought about Better Buy-(just for a moment during the tournament on how Best Ball is a little like the goal of GSA’s Better Buy Pilot Project). GSA’s Better Buy in its truest form, selects from the best acquisition related ideas to come up with a Better Buy. Not being able to play golf as much as I have in past years, I found Best Ball to be a great way to enjoy your golfing group, and still be challenged by other golf groups to get the lowest score. Using the Best Ball to Better Buy analogy, I also noticed how Best Ball also encourages collaboration. For example, it’s one thing to go to church on Sunday and pass each other in the vestibule leaving service for a quick hi and bye, but its another experience to fellowship for 3-4 hours with brothers on the golf course. All the way around, Best Ball is a Better Deal.

I only wish that all of the other federal agencies would be able to implement innovation as readily as the Better Buy group has. I really believe that agencies if they modeled the creativity of Best Buy, and encouraged the marketplace to collaborate on ideas to improve acquisition strategies, then I believe more large businesses would genuinely collaborate with small business on government contracts. This Best Buy experiment has a long way to go to permeate throughout federal agencies and with the prime contractor community, but I believe supportive acceptance by those of us who have looped together here at Gov Loop can only better ensure that this Best Buy pilot takes off and impacts other agencies.

So I propose to Gov Loopers and Open Government fans to join us at Open Government TV to plan a Better Buy Golf outing. For those interested in helping to plan such a collaborating event, call us at 202-449-7705. and join our twitter and new OGTV face book page found on our website. www.opengovtv.com

Let’s celebrate and promote Better Buy Innovation, and an Open Government on the Green.