More Advice for Incoming Administration

[jonmjohnson]

Chris Dorobek tagged this on his LinkedIn feed and called it a must read - https://medium.com/code-for-america/procurement-under-trump-d7c924342d21#.ahb8auwep.  

I read it...don't know if I needed to.  

Strikes me as a little sour grapes from an exiting administration who blames FAR for not allowing them to transform towards a Digital Government in the way that had been promised.  It is filled with the pivots, minimal viable product, agile, waterfall, iterative, and other such VC forced language that has been used the past 4-5 years in government.  Speaking of pivoting....she appears to be arguing that the "Silicon Valley" culture that had been adopted to 18F and USDS should be leveraged to "fix" procurement.  Many in government think that both programs will be sent packing in the new administration, and lots of "op-eds" and other communications have been trying to continually argue their value and merits (because their output had not been able to do so successfully:  re: https://www.meritalk.com/articles/ig-questions-business-practices-major-losses-at-18f/)

Impressions?  Must read with merit, or wasted read and more noise?

 

 

[Guest Vern Edwards]

Jennifer Pahlka is right that the acquisition rules are outdated and excessively complex. But she apparently does not understand the legislation and regulation that govern acquisition and how they work together. She clearly does not realize much of the worst parts of FAR implement statutes enacted by Congress and that Congress must change the laws before anyone can change the worst parts of the FAR. She apparently does not realize that Congress is dysfunctional and fundamentally impotent when it comes to managing things and so tries to manage through legislation, which is the only thing it can produce. When Congress makes laws the executive must make regulations to implement them. She also does not realize that even if someone could improve the FAR, preparing the acquisition workforce to work with fewer rules is a much bigger challenge. If you got rid of the FAR entirely they would be paralyzed.

When a person is as ignorant as Ms Pahlka, they can't do much good, little that they say is of much use, and there is nothing that you can do to help them.

You didn't need to read her piece, and neither does anyone else.

I'm sure that Ms Pahlka is a good mom. She'll feel better if she devotes more time to raising her chickens.

[jonmjohnson]

Why people put those type of descriptions in their profiles just astounds me.

[Guest Vern Edwards]

Because sometimes it has a good effect. Patty Murray won a seat in the U.S. Senate by calling herself "a mom in tennis shoes."

[bob7947]

Perhaps caring for chickens will make Title VIII of the NDAA for FY 17 go away.  That title has about 100 sections on contracting this year.  There appears to be a significant rewrite of DoD's systems acquisition in addition to commercial item contracting sections and other goodies.  I did not notice if many of the new sections were written to affect government-wide contracting or just DoD contracting.  Whoever gets stuck with it, will be surprised. In addition to the many new contracting sections, it appears that a good number of the sections were changed during conference because there is quite a bit of explanation in the conference report.  I assume the legislation is worse than usual because of that.  Contracting legislation-on the-fly.

I am normally done Wifcon's analysis of the NDAA act by now.  However, there is so much of it this year, I will be lucky to have it done by the New Year.    

[REA'n Maker]

Not another one of these "procurement is hard!" rants.

It's amazing how few people - in Congress or elsewhere - have a clue that the government's job is not to get the lowest price ever paid for a product or service:  It's to treat those competing for taxpayer dollars fairly, and to ensure that the taxpayer dollars are spent in the most egalitarian and non-prejudicial manner possible - to "spread the wealth", in short.   If it's also the low price, even better.

Quote

"Many years ago when I came to Washington to work in the field of government contracting, I concluded that there was one major advantage to being on the government side of the negotiating table. That advantage was that I was under no pressure to extract money from the contractor by unfair bargaining or unfair contract administration. To me fairness was an integral part of the job of a government employee. I still believe it and teach it. Thus, no matter what the outcome of the good faith and fair dealing litigation, I will continue to urge government employees that fair treatment of contractors is the only way to go."

 

 

 

[apsofacto]

Hi, REA'n Maker,

I'm admittedly a little naïve, but I think that spending in an egalitarian and non-prejudicial manner results in lower prices.  Not for every single transaction, but overall.

However, the "spread the wealth" virus has spread far and wide- I think it is the opposite of egalitarian and non-prejudicial.  It is explicitly prejudicial and anti-incumbent.  At least the strain which infects my environment. That phrase just makes my teeth grind.