Hello,

Curious what tools (Microsoft Project, Paperless Contract File (PCF), Excel, etc.) are used out there for folks to internally track their active contracts. PoP, burn rate, contract performance, current value, total contract value, etc. And if used on classified networks. Thank you.

Deltek’s ERP system and Cobblestone’s product are probably the two most frequently used. Both are complex yet robust and take effort to set up, train staff, and operate. But they are fine for large projects.

I personally think they are overkill for the majority of government contracts and those products are often barely used for their full capacity. What seems to work best and provide meaningful results are tools specifically set up for individual contract specific needs. First, define what data is needed to effectively manage and oversee performance. Then build the means to obtain and track using tools like Microsoft Project or Excel. Don’t overthink this - just brainstorm what’s needed and set up the process to provide results.

Thanks @formerfed . Microsoft Project is what we are thinking as well that way we can tailor, as you stated, to meet our needs vs. paying for an expensive license for a product that may be to much for our needs.

Civilian GVT - Not Classified

BLUF - We use Microsoft 365 products (Excel, Power BI), not because they are the best, but because people know how to use them.

Basic individual data needs or ad-hoc reporting is typically Excel files.

Tracking - and other types of sophisticated information that is used by many people - is centrally administrated and communicated out via dashboards and metrics. We primarily use PowerBI, since it is (relatively) easy to use. Some science/tech groups within agency use Tableau, which they are more familiar with. Agency has some extremely power Oracle reporting tools that I detest and never use.

Our data is simple - hosted in private .gov cloud, isn't classified, doesn't need custom permissions, isn't confidential (like, no source selection info, no detailed invoice/cost info). Despite our relative simplicity, data management still manages to be the hardest part. Centrally controlled data is an effort, but better than the alternative of distributing out the raw data and having everyone use Excel to make up their own undocumented, customized, and conflicting metrics.

@ All:

What data should be tracked?

20 hours ago, Vern Edwards said:

@ All:

What data should be tracked?

I’ve thought about this and I can’t don’t come up with a simple answer. There are so many variables - contract type, nature of what’s being brought, criticality of successful performance to mission, COR/PM respective roles to the CO, availability of existing data in other systems like financial payments and invoice acceptance, and even management desire to monitor certain items.

Take the example of “burn rate.” Does a contracting officer want details to track? Or do they want the COR to be totally responsible for that? Or are the contractors periodic status reports sufficient?

At the highest level, there should be data letting the contracting officer know the likelihood that performance will be on time and within price/cost limits.

58 minutes ago, formerfed said:

There are so many variables

Government perspecitve or contractor perspective. It might just be that the OP asked the question from the contractor perspective and the thread has turned to the government perspective.

59 minutes ago, formerfed said:

Or do they want the COR to be totally responsible for that?

And to nit pick a little more "COR/PM" seems to be more appropriate.

Good morning,

I am a contractor, per se, but this is more for the government sponsor. We have fancy dashboards for other areas, just not for acquisition. The end state would be to build something in Jira that can pull the required data from our servers to present into a visual (tableau) for the director and Deputy Director in charge of the program. A placemat for each active contract tailored to the complexity and dollar amount.

6 hours ago, Vern Edwards said:

What data elements should you track?

Contract data is useful, but what we are doing is people.

CORs. We lost hundreds of CORs, most of our best CORs, and had perhaps a thousand active contracts change CORs (compared to ~100 for prior years). Many brand-new CORs. CORs abruptly assigned to complex ongoing contracts, or to contracts that had no COR for months, etc. Critical COR shorts in many domains - IT, research, facilities, cost contracts, etc. One COR Level 2 has >90 contracts. We've got a COR Level 1 with 40 assigned to them. Few of them understand the nuances of the FAC cert process.

So, we now are building a lot of COR tracking. Something that is new. Whose got the certificates, much more detail about certification and training status, who can do what, who has capacity, etc. As little of this is or can be automated, it's a far high effort for a pretty basic output compared to anything you can do with financial or acquisition data.

On 12/9/2025 at 10:51 AM, dave2025 said:

Good morning,

I am a contractor, per se, but this is more for the government sponsor. We have fancy dashboards for other areas, just not for acquisition. The end state would be to build something in Jira that can pull the required data from our servers to present into a visual (tableau) for the director and Deputy Director in charge of the program. A placemat for each active contract tailored to the complexity and dollar amount.

I think if you are using something like Jira and applying it to contracts, you are a pioneer. If you can do it so it’s useful to a contracting office and just the contracting function, that would be amazing.

This could be so useful to contract management and let them know early on of potential problems.

@formerfed I just need to teach myself Jira. challenge accepted. i mean how hard can it be? if i remember -- i will report back with how it is coming along.

1 hour ago, dave2025 said:

I just need to teach myself

I would suggest adding in a little research too. In the world of government sometimes someone has already created the tool. Quick research on my part dug up this up (link below). No promotion on my part by offering it up and it might not be what you are looking for. Just a tickler to suggest there might be something out there already.

Atlassian

Atlassian Government Teams | Atlassian

Jira, Confluence, and Trello help agencies plan and collaborate at scale. Explore secure and scaleable cloud and data center products, backed by certificat

Do we devote too much time to complicated IT/software tracking and management "tools"?

How did we ever track and manage complicated undertakings before we had them? Like the SR-71?

Have government program outcomes improved significantly since the arrival of management information systems?

I sometimes wonder if the IT management software industry has sold us a bill of goods.

On 12/11/2025 at 8:51 AM, Vern Edwards said:

Do we devote too much time to complicated IT/software tracking and management "tools"?

How did we ever track and manage complicated undertakings before we had them? Like the SR-71?

Have government program outcomes improved significantly since the arrival of management information systems?

I sometimes wonder if the IT management software industry has sold us a bill of goods.

To answer the question: Yes. We have all these fancy tools and filling them in daily/weekly/monthly becomes a significant part of the job. Then no one ever looks at the tools themselves, so you get one-off data calls that are already answered by looking in the tool. Then a persistent comment at your weekly or monthly staff meeting is to update the information in the tool. All of this to give management a feeling that they are managing something.

Back in my SES days, I really tried hard to find the information myself before asking a staff member for it. The amount of work (and sometimes panic) that comes with a data call is massive. There is so much information already at your finger tips that you rarely need to ask if you try to know where to look. Even something basic like usaspending.gov will give you basic information on the project, vendor, obligation, POP, and outlays.

(As an aside, I read a long article about Skunk Works yesterday. They were able to field an SR-71 prototype in fewer than 200 days. Amazing.)

I'm curious to know whether anyone has experience using PRISM for workload tracking. My office is in the process of converting from our trusty Excel-based trackers to PRISM, and it's not going well -- big gaps in the data we need, wonky presentation, and extreme latency.

Anyone have a similar or different experience with PRISM?

DHS and GSA apparently have success with PRISM. DoD is starting to use it as well. You might have your technical experts contact DHS for advice.

On 12/5/2025 at 9:28 AM, dave2025 said:

Hello,

Curious what tools (Microsoft Project, Paperless Contract File (PCF), Excel, etc.) are used out there for folks to internally track their active contracts. PoP, burn rate, contract performance, current value, total contract value, etc. And if used on classified networks. Thank you.

On 12/9/2025 at 7:51 AM, dave2025 said:

I am a contractor, per se, but this is more for the government sponsor. We have fancy dashboards for other areas, just not for acquisition. The end state would be to build something in Jira that can pull the required data from our servers to present into a visual (tableau) for the director and Deputy Director in charge of the program. A placemat for each active contract tailored to the complexity and dollar amount.

Jargon is fascinating. (This is not a complaint or criticism. Jargon often serves a useful purpose.) New contract specialists should study the jargon(s) used by their colleagues in various fields. Keep a little notebook.

Jargon is often written off as a bad thing. But technical jargon is both necessary and useful for members of a profession or other group to communicate with each other.

Plenty of Words to Serve!

by Elllio M Imbasciati  

Lyrically spiritual,
An apparition magician
There's the word one minute,
Then the next,
Something new, but the previous unit of language is never forgotten,
Plenty of words to serve!
Oral or verbal,
An underrated chatterboxer,
Swinging his dictionaries & thesauruses in glee,
Firmly confirming the triumph of the unconquerable mind

FROM TECHNICAL JARGON TO PLAIN ENGLISH.pdf THE PENETRATION OF SPECIALIZED JARGON.pdf

2 hours ago, FrankJon said:

I'm curious to know whether anyone has experience using PRISM for workload tracking. My office is in the process of converting from our trusty Excel-based trackers to PRISM, and it's not going well -- big gaps in the data we need, wonky presentation, and extreme latency.

Yes. A topic near to my heart. Your PRISM version may be very different from mine, and PRISM is rapidly changing, so not all of this rant may apply.

PRISM (my version and at least some others I know of) uses requisitions (called requisitions in PRISM, but goes by different names, it is the funding document) to track requirements This is PRISM's fatal flaw. Funding Requirement.

I suppose If your office typically has a single requirement with a single requisition that arrives at the beginning of the process, and "workload" means "Preaward-Only" then PRISM is technically acceptable for workload. If not, PRISM is bad, don't use it.

PRISM - at least my version - has minimal to no workload tracking functionality beyond requisitions. Most likely you will need to continue to track workload outside of PRISM and then reconcile the two sources.

Even this most elemental of tracking mechanisms fails if funding (requisitions) is moderately complicated.

Disclosure: I work within HHS, where PRISM is called HCAS. I've said all of this (and more, this is the short list) on the record to HCAS PMs, who will probably read this and disagree with me.

Just now, Vern Edwards said:

Jargon is fascinating. (This is not a complaint or criticism. Jargon often serves a useful purpose.) New contract specialists should study the jargon(s) used by their colleagues in various fields. Keep a little notebook.

It is especially important for newbies to understand the difference between jargon and terms of art. See Garner's Modern English Usage, 4th ed. (2016):

JARGON refers to the special, usually technical idiom of any social, occupational, or professional group. It arises from the need to streamline communication, to save time and space—and occasionally to conceal meaning from the uninitiated. The subject has magnified importance today because "we live in an age when vague rhetoric and incomprehensible jargon predominate."

See Garner's Dictionary of Legal Usage, 3d ed. (2011):

TERMS OF ART are words having a specific, precise meaning in a given specialty... One secret of good legal writing is to distinguish rigorously between terms of art and mere jargon."

See: ALLIANT TECHSYSTEMS INC., ATK Aerospace Group, Plaintiff, v. The UNITED STATES, Defendant, 74 Fed. C. Fed.Cl. 566, 579, United States Court of Federal Claims:

This case presents a difficult question of contract interpretation, complicated by the subsurface presence of confusing jargon, complex benefits concepts, and esoteric accounting issues—as the background section, above, can attest. The difficulty is compounded by the parties' squabbling over the use of terms, best exemplified by the plaintiff's insistence in describing the proportion of benefits costs that corresponded to the Army's percentage of its business base as the “Fair Share PRB Costs,” and the government's refusal to adopt this somewhat-loaded label... But merely because interpretation is attended with some difficulty does not mean that a contract is ambiguous, as a careful review of the language relevant to these proceedings confirms.

And see United Launch Services, LLC, 14-1 BCA P 35511 (Armed Services Board of Contract Appeals):

Although the term “equitable adjustment” has been considered a term of art, that conclusion arises from its use in non-commercial items contracts where the government has a right to direct a unilateral change. In that context, the term is generally limited to requiring those “corrective measures utilized to keep a contractor whole when the Government modifies a contract.” Pacific Architects & Engineers, Inc. v. United States, 491 F.2d 734, 739 (Ct. Cl. 1974). However, this customary understanding of the term need not be followed in the event of a significant change in context. General Builders Supply Co. v. United States, 409 F.2d 246, 249-50 (Ct. Cl. 1969). The Changes clause in this commercial items contract dictates that it can only be changed with the agreement of the parties. It requires the parties to negotiate an equitable adjustment in the event they agree upon a change causing an increase or decrease in contract costs, performance time, or that otherwise affects any other contract provision, but it does not define the limitations of the equitable adjustment. The government cites no authority defining the term in this context.

We work in a complex legal environment. Contracting professionals must communicate clearly.

DAU (Defense Acquisition University) defines burn rate as "The monthly rate at which a contractor's funds are expended during the period of the contract."

https://www.dau.edu/glossary/burn-rate

Now, what does that mean, exactly? Is it the rate at which the contractor incurs costs or pays money or the rate at which the government allocates funds to the contract? Are they the same thing? Is it something else entirely? Is it the actual cost of the work performed?

The term "burn rate" is not anywhere defined anywhere in the FAR System (Title 48, Code of Federal Regulations). It is not defined in a financial context anywhere within the Code of Federal Regulations. It is not defined in the United States Code. It is not defined in Black's Law Dictionary. Is it a term of art? Is it jargon? Does it's meaning depend on context? If so, how? A review of government contract court and board decisions shows that the term has been used in a number of way inconsistent with DAU's definition.

I believe that this is the kind of thinking that a contracting officer should do when writing and reviewing prospective contract documents, in order to avoid needless disputes. That's part of why contracting officers exist. That's the kind of thing we do. That's part of our value added.

My shop has a custom dashboard that pulls information from our contract writing system (not PRISM). This dashboard tracks unassigned PRs, POP expirations, burn rates, and other related information. I think it also tracks offices, CORs, NAICS, and PSCs as well. We also track outstanding FPDS and CPARS, but I think that is done on a different dashboard. The challenge here is that sometimes, the quality of the info output is only as good as the input.

2 hours ago, General.Zhukov said:

PRISM (my version and at least some others I know of) uses requisitions (called requisitions in PRISM, but goes by different names, it is the funding document) to track requirements This is PRISM's fatal flaw. Funding Requirement.

Equal experience some years ago when PRISM was activated for the agency I worked for. I always felt the fatal flaw was not Funding Requirement, it was the fact that PRISM was adopted for agency use by the financial side of the house with minimal input for acquisition. At that time by my research and experience PRISM was (is?) limited only by what parts the agency wanted to implement. The experience was during training on it use where we were told something like "Oh we are not using that element of PRISM." Reasoning - more costly to do so.

On 12/12/2025 at 3:35 PM, formerfed said:

DHS and GSA apparently have success with PRISM. DoD is starting to use it as well. You might have your technical experts contact DHS for advice.

3 hours ago, General.Zhukov said:

Yes. A topic near to my heart. Your PRISM version may be very different from mine, and PRISM is rapidly changing, so not all of this rant may apply.

PRISM (my version and at least some others I know of) uses requisitions (called requisitions in PRISM, but goes by different names, it is the funding document) to track requirements This is PRISM's fatal flaw. Funding Requirement.

I suppose If your office typically has a single requirement with a single requisition that arrives at the beginning of the process, and "workload" means "Preaward-Only" then PRISM is technically acceptable for workload. If not, PRISM is bad, don't use it.

PRISM - at least my version - has minimal to no workload tracking functionality beyond requisitions. Most likely you will need to continue to track workload outside of PRISM and then reconcile the two sources.

Even this most elemental of tracking mechanisms fails if funding (requisitions) is moderately complicated.

Disclosure: I work within HHS, where PRISM is called HCAS. I've said all of this (and more, this is the short list) on the record to HCAS PMs, who will probably read this and disagree with me.

1 hour ago, C Culham said:

Equal experience some years ago when PRISM was activated for the agency I worked for. I always felt the fatal flaw was not Funding Requirement, it was the fact that PRISM was adopted for agency use by the financial side of the house with minimal input for acquisition. At that time by my research and experience PRISM was (is?) limited only by what parts the agency wanted to implement. The experience was during training on it use where we were told something like "Oh we are not using that element of PRISM." Reasoning - more costly to do so.

Thank you all for the feedback! From what I hear, my agency paid for "all the bells and whistles" for our version of PRISM. So my assumption is the powers that be will be eager to throw good money after bad for quite a while...

by PRISM do you mean the contract writing system?

Good question, dave2025. As a point of clarification for the entire discussion for everyone, PRISM is a very robust system and contract writing is just one component. Some other pieces including requisitions, workflow processing, contract management/administration support, vendor management, FPDS input, and financial integration. The financial portion is very important to some agencies because it allows seamless interface with accounting and financial systems.

All this means is someone with all these components can initiate and track requisitions, apply funds certification (only authorized users while others can view), create solicitation and award documents, track invoices and payments including line-by-line account reconciliation, and initiate closeout. The interface also allows easier creation of dashboards if that’s of importance to offices.

4 hours ago, formerfed said:

As a point of clarification for the entire discussion for everyone, PRISM is a very robust system and contract writing is just one component. Some other pieces including requisitions, workflow processing, contract management/administration support, vendor management, FPDS input, and financial integration. The financial portion is very important to some agencies because it allows seamless interface with accounting and financial systems.

Wow!

The first of the PRISMs was introduced in 2007. How did we manage the contracts for the B-52, the SR-71, ICBMs and launch vehicles, MIRVs, the F-16, and to go to the moon and back without it? Are we doing better today?

The advertising:

Designed for federal contracting professionals, our industry-leading PRISM solution ensures strict adherence to the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR). This AI-enabled, user-friendly solution simplifies the acquisition lifecycle, automates complex processes, and ensures regulatory compliance.

So that's what 1102s are spending their time learning today. Automated bookkeeping.

Well, okay. That and the RFOn are all we need. Problems solved.