Hey there. I’m Christopher Dorobek — the DorobekINSIDER — and welcome GovLoop’s DorobekINSIDER… where we focus on six words: Helping government do its job better.
On GovLoop’s DorobekINSIDER:
- A how-to guide for being a government innovator
- How to Avoid the Lion’s Mouth: Risk Management
- Just What the Doctor Ordered: How To Achieve Smarter Care
But up front: What one change would you make?
If you could make one change that would help government do its job better, what would it be?
On Wednesday, I attended the American Council on Technology and Industry Advisory Council’s (ACT-IAC) membership meeting. The session included a panel on Evolving the Government Acquisition Marketplace. (Details on GSA’s Government Acquisition Marketplace from GovLoop’s DorobekINSIDER.)
The panel, moderated by Chris Hamm, director of GSA’s Federal Systems Integration and Management Center, featured:
- Kenneth Brennan, deputy director, acquisition technology, Office of the Under Secretary of Defense (Acquisition, Technology and Logistics)
- Mary Davie, assistant commissioner at GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service
- Lesley Field, Deputy Administrator at the Office for Federal Procurement Policy
- Kevin Youel Page, who was recently named the deputy commissioner for GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service
The session was good — here are a few of my tweets:
at @ACTIAC meeting: #GovCon: Q: Most agencies have a ‘use our contract first’ policy – is that going to change?
— cdorobek (@cdorobek) November 19, 2014
At @ACTIAC meeting: DOD’s Kenneth Brennan: Too often the price/need is driven by the end of the fiscal year rather than best value
— cdorobek (@cdorobek) November 19, 2014
at @ACTIAC meeting:GSA’s Kevin Page: We don’t need hundreds of groups figuring out office supplies; let’s focus on the big stuff
— cdorobek (@cdorobek) November 19, 2014
at @ACTIAC meeting: OFPP’s LField: Gov had many many contracts with the same vendors; we could save by just streamlining those
— cdorobek (@cdorobek) November 19, 2014
See Federal Computer Week’s story: GSA works on the Common Acquisition Platform
But a number of people came up to me after suggesting that this conversation could have gone on a decade ago, if not longer.
And when I got home, I received this e-mail from somebody who is an acquisition expert:
Many of the comments are almost verbatim what we’ve been hearing for years….requirements are the problem? Who knew?? Best value and budget-based acquisitions dont go together?? Wow. Multiple contracts with the same company?? I am stunned.
Steve Kelman, the professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, even recently wrote: When it comes to federal procurement, it’s the requirements, stupid…
So… I challenged people — both in e-mail and at the ACT-IAC meeting — what would they change.
The big question
The question I posed: You are in change. You can make one big change. What big change would you make that would help the government do its job better?
One response was to put offices on Web cameras so everybody could see what they are doing — or, by implication, not doing. (Although it seems the Russians may have already beat us to that idea.)
Another person said we need leadership. Unfortunately for him, I called a flag on that response. Too often people expose leadership as if it is some kind of pixy dust without saying what leadership actually is. (Culture change seems to fall in this category.) Unfortunately as I pressed, it became apparent that the notion needed greater mulling.
Here is mine: Blow up the FAR. Yes — throw out the Federal Acquisition Regulation. It is massive. It is bulky. It is bureaucratic. Increasingly, the FAR reminds me of one of my favorite Mark Twain quotes: I didn’t have time to write a short letter so I wrote a long one instead.
I have friends who I know and respect who say that it is the best at what it does in the entire world, and that, in the end, the FAR enables more than it prohibits. But it seems to me any document that needs to be moved using a trolley just isn’t an enabler. It is a problem. It is the reason why contract managers run in fear of any change. (Ironically, the fear is that they could be thrown in jail, even though I don’t know of any case where a contracting official has been thrown in jail… save those who were actively trying to scam the system.)
One of the interesting side conversations at ACT-IAC’s Executive Leadership Conference 2014 recently was from a person who recommended putting the FAR on a wiki and allowing edits. But for me, I’m not sure that goes far enough. I think we need to hit CONTROL-ALT-DELETE and do a full reset.
In the end, the current FAR seeks to address every issue that has ever come up — or will ever come up. In the end, the FAR should be… streamlined. My challenge would be… could we do it in 10 pages?
So… you are in charge for a day. What one change would you make?
The DorobekINSIDER #GovMustRead list:
- How GOP’s play on spending could backfire [Politico]
- Review details security failures in White House fence-jumping incident [The Washington Post]
- Justice Department collected record $24 billion in fiscal 2014 [The Wall Street Journal] More Than Triple the Amount Collected The Year Before
- Before Snowden, a debate inside NSA [AP] Years before Edward Snowden sparked a public outcry with the disclosure that the National Security Agency had been secretly collecting American telephone records, some NSA executives voiced strong objections to the program, current and former intelligence officials say. The program exceeded the agency’s mandate to focus on foreign spying and would do little to stop terror plots, the executives argued. The 2009 dissent, led by a senior NSA official and embraced by others at the agency, prompted the Obama administration to consider, but ultimately abandon, a plan to stop gathering the records. The secret internal debate has not been previously reported. The Senate on Tuesday rejected an administration proposal that would have curbed the program and left the records in the hands of telephone companies rather than the government. That would be an arrangement similar to the one the administration quietly rejected in 2009.
DorobekINSIDER water cooler fodder
Before we finish up… a few items from the DorobekINSIDER water-cooler fodder… yes, we’re trying to help you make your water-cooler time better too…
- Federal CTO Megan Smith: ‘You Can Affect Billions of People’ [The New York Times Magazine]
- Capitol Hill’s Unusual Food Customs [National Geographic] In ethics, what constitutes a meal?
- The tyranny of the long term [The Economist] Let’s not get carried away in bashing short-termism
- 9 Books That Malcolm Gladwell Thinks Everyone Should Read [BusinessInsider]
- They include:
- The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game by Michael Lewis; Psychoanalysis by Janet Malcolm;
- The Person and the Situation: Perspectives of Social Psychology by Richard Nisbett and Lee Ross;
- Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner;
- Opposable Mind: Winning Through Integrative Thinking by Roger Martin;
- Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us) by Tom Vanderbilt;
- Personal: A Jack Reacher Novel by Lee Child;
- Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets by Nassim Taleb;
- Nixon Agonistes: The Crisis of the Self-Made Man by Garry Wills
- The Silicon Valley Job Title Generator — I got ‘Longform Engagement Ninja’
GovLoop’s DorobekINSIDER on social media:
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