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The traditional approach to IT service acquisitions is to put a solicitation on the street and evaluate written proposals of how a contractor would design, build, and implement a new IT system.

Does anyone have experience or can point me to IT service acquisitions where rather than direct potential contractors to "Tell" us how they'll do something, we direct them to "Show & Tell" us how they do it?

In other words, a group I'm working with is exploring the notion of providing a concept paper and 4 databases (web, access, excel, sharepoint, etc...) along with fake data from each and providing potential contractors the time (60-90 days) to provide a live system for us to actually test. In theory, this will minimize the failure rate (typically high) of contractors to deliver on time and within budget, not to mention a viable product.

This approach would enable us to see which company can actually do the work and do it the best, and supposing it works, we could provide them with the contract to finalize the system, maintain it, and perform ad hoc upgrades.

What I'm looking for are examples across contracting where this has happened or something similar so we can mitigate failure and achieve success.

Thanks,

Mark

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Hi marknaggar,

If the government receives something of value ("a live system for us to actually test") shouldn't it pay the contractors for their ("60-90 days") of effort? Aren't you in fact soliciting something of value without offering to pay for it?

And what about IP rights? How do the parties determine who has the right to the system design, since it was done at the contractor's private expense?

In other words, I would suggest awarding up to 4 Phase 1 contracts for a prototype system and then selecting the system that works best, based on your requirements. If you don't have a contract with IP rights spelled out and which provides adequate consideration for the effort involved, I suspect you'll have issues downstream.

(Not a procurement guy, so my common sense comments may be off-base. Apologies in advance if that's the case.)

Hope this helps.

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here-2-help brings up good points. Requiring offerors to do 60-90 days worth of development at ther own expense isn't realistic or proper unless you have a major acquisition.

Some agencies require an operational capability demonstration as part of the evaluation. It can be combined with oral presentations. You provide sample data to the offerors and they then demonstrate how their approach will work. If they can't show actual performance, they explain how their approach will work. For example, they might use a COTS product to demonstrate actual performance on part. They could develop extensions to demonstrate even more. If they couldn't on the balance, they explain how they will proceed and provide examples.

Another suggestion is throughly consider past performance. Ask for specific examples of where the offeror did this work. Contact or even visit places where the offeror performed and do fact finding. This is benefical and assess how the offeror performed on other similar engagements.

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Guest Vern Edwards

If all you want to do is base the selection on a demonstration, a test, then that is nothing new and no big deal. But you need to give us more details, since you seem to want some design and development and maybe some delivery. Are you talking about competitive prototyping?

Is the procurement for "IT services", as you said in your opening post, or for the development of one or more deliverable system(s) -- hardware, software, firmware, etc.?

Are you planning the award of a contract for the delivery of a system, or an IDIQ task or delivery order contract for various system development and support services work?

Are you willing to pay for the proposal development effort that you plan to test and use for contractor selection, or do you expect the competitors to do it with bid and proposal money?

Would the contract to "finalize" the system be a separate award or part of the award for which the proposals would be solicited?

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If you end up paying a stipend or use some other method to pay for or share costs to "provide a live system for [you] to actually test" , you should limit the number of firms that would be eligible for payment. Perhaps use some type of 2 phase short-listing procedure with only up to X number of phase 1 concerns invited to show and tell...

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In other words, a group I'm working with is exploring the notion of providing a concept paper and 4 databases (web, access, excel, sharepoint, etc...) along with fake data from each and providing potential contractors the time (60-90 days) to provide a live system for us to actually test. In theory, this will minimize the failure rate (typically high) of contractors to deliver on time and within budget, not to mention a viable product.

This approach would enable us to see which company can actually do the work and do it the best, and supposing it works, we could provide them with the contract to finalize the system, maintain it, and perform ad hoc upgrades.

Years ago, I used similar approaches as part of major systems source selections, but the contractors were paid.

In both cases – one for hardware and one for services, the initial competition led to the award of what we’ll call “concept definition” contracts. During the performance of the “concept definition” contracts, the contractors were, in effect, developing proposals over a period of 180 days. After the period of performance ended, the contractors delivered studies, amounting to technical proposals containing specs / statements of work, along with pricing. These submissions were evaluated, and they were addressed during discussions.

After several months of evaluation and discussions, awards were made.

Each concept definition contract cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Uncle received unlimited rights to the data contained in the submissions.

The total lead times for the supply and service contracts were 9 to 12 months.

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