Anne Rung of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy recently announced a new model for a 3-pronged acquisition improvement plan. Her changes will focus on three areas: category management, acquisition workface talent development, stronger vendor relationships. Here are some excerpts from FederalNewsRadio.com’s article on the new model:
Category Management:
“Under category management, Rung said OFPP wants to take what the General Services Administration has been working on internally over the last year and expand it governmentwide. GSA stood up three categories earlier this year and is expected to open more category hallways in the coming months.
She said the Strategic Sourcing Leadership Council (SSLC) will lead the initiative to set up categories across 10 commonly purchased goods and services.
OFPP estimates agencies spend about $277 billion a year across these 10 areas, which include IT ($47.4 billion), professional services ($64.6 billion), facilities and construction ($72.1 billion) and medical ($33.2 billion).
‘These categories may be a little bit fluid over time as we dig into the data and really understand what’s in these categories, but it serves as an organizing principle to think where we are going to stand up teams, gather data and starting to share information,” Rung said. “It really is a fundamental shift in how we think about what represents over $200 billion in spend every year.’”
Acquisition Workforce:
“Over the last two years, OFPP has been updating the workforce certification program, but too many times Rung said their skillsets are a mile wide and an inch deep.
Rung said OFPP wants to create teams of acquisition experts, starting with IT.
“In a few months, we will be bringing on our first class of recruits from the agencies as detailees within the existing Digital Services team, so we are partnered up with [director] Mikey [Dickerson] and his team on this initiative,” she said. “We will put them through a soon-to-be-developed digital IT acquisition training and send half of the graduating class back to the agencies, while using the remaining graduates as part of a SWAT team in digital services. It’s important to note that these actions are not designed to substitute for an agency’s existing workforce. We recognize that many contracting officers may need expert assistance or hands-on training to deal with complex IT and other specialized requirements. This team would be one such resource for them to use.”
Rung said OFPP still is working out the details of this training program, including how many students will be in the first class and how long the program will last.”
Vendor Relationships:
“Within 90 days, OFPP will work with agencies and vendors to develop guidance for how successful and unsuccessful bidders will assess agency acquisition efforts.
Rung said GSA launched this effort on a specific procurement earlier this year, and DoD will kick off a second pilot in 2015.
‘By targeting the feedback on specific acquisitions, we can be much more focused on the acquisition outcomes, and, in particular, how do we drive greater innovations in our acquisitions,” she said. “The idea is really to do this across all categories of acquisitions and launch this enterprise-wide. GSA’s was, I believe, on a professional services contract, and the key here is we would use standard questions for each of these surveys so over time we can start to identify where we may have weaknesses or where our strengths are so we can share best practices. By asking these standard questions, you can really start to see the trends and areas you may want to focus in on.’”
It seems like significant changes are in the works for all three areas of the new model. Any thoughts on Rung’s plan? Comment below!