DOD ACQUISITION PANEL RECOMMENDS CHANGES TO COMMERCIAL SOLUTION ACQUISITIONS

The Department of Defense should consider replacing commercial buying and existing simplified acquisition procedures with simplified, readily available procedures for procuring readily available products and services.  This is among the recommendations made by the DOD Section 809 panel in its “Volume 3” report released earlier this week.  This recommendation, number 35 in the full report, seems to suggest that DOD cease using existing IDIQ contracts, like GSA Schedule contracts, but it does not come right out and say so.  Schedule contracts, arguably, are simplified acquisition procedures and, additional Panel recommendations can be read as making these contracts easier to use.  Recommendations 74 & 75, for example, call for the elimination of redundant documentation requirements or superfluous approvals that add no value to the acquisition process.  This would seem to embrace recommendations made by Booz Allen Hamilton, and others, to streamline the Justification and Approval process so that blanket approvals can be given for the use of non-DOD contracts. 

Overall, the report recommends that DOD embrace a three-tiered “Dynamic Marketplace Framework” for acquisition.  The first bucket would be items that are readily available and require no customization.  Rules and regulations would be minimized for the acquisition of such solutions.  The second bucket would hold solutions that are readily available, but require some customization.  Simplified procedures would also be used to acquire these solutions, but a few more steps would be required.  Defense-unique solutions would be in the third bucket.  The acquisition of these solutions would face a more formal process, but even here the Section 809 panel recommends new rapid acquisition authorities and other flexible approaches.

For IT acquisition, the Volume 3 report recommends that DOD adopt rules to allow for the more flexible acquisition of IT on consumption-based solutions.  Such guidelines could make it easier for DOD entities to buy “as-a-service” solutions.  Recognizing the IT brain-drain in DOD, the Panel also calls for DOD to create a pilot program where it would be able to get assistance from technology consultants via an on-line talent marketplace.

Additional recommendations would limit protests under certain circumstances, with recommendation 67 eliminating the ability of a contractor to file a protest at the COFC after filing with GAO.  Similar recommendations deal with dollar levels for protests and timelines for protest resolution.

Panel Chairman David Drabkin called the Volume 3 report, “the one with the bold ideas” at a recent gathering at George Washington University Law School.  It is expected to be the final report of the Section 809 panel.  The House and Senate Armed Services Committees, along with DOD and other interested parties, will now sift through the recommendations to see which ones make into future Defense Authorization measures or DOD policy directives.  This will likely be a multi-year process.  In the meantime, the Panel has published an Executive Summary of the Volume 3 report, available here for those who want to take a more complete lookhttps://section809panel.org/volume-3-report/