Vern Edwards

Career management has always been challenging, but 2025 brought shock, uncertainty, anxiety, and discouragement to the task for almost all of us who have pursued a career working for and with the federal government. We may face more and even greater such challenges in years to come. Those challenges may include war. We could use a little encouragement, which is why I have made this post and attached to it two of the most inspiring career stories I have ever read. Attached are the texts of two lectures given to the American Council of Learned Society, both entitled, A Life of Learning. They were parts of the Charles Homer Haskins Lecture series, which have been given each year since 1983. The attached lectures were given by two very great scholars and authors in very different fields. The first was by the late Annemarie Schimmel, who was a scholar of religion, an author, and a professor at Harvard and other universities. The second was by the late Helen Vendler, another Harvard professor and a renowned literary critic, teacher, and author. I found these two lectures, in which each speaker described her life’s work, to be very inspiring. Neither speaker had been privileged in life. Both worked hard out of a love of learning, dealt with life and career obstacles and setbacks and, in their cases, struggled against academic prejudice against women. (At Harvard, when Vendler was finally admitted as a graduate student, the English department chairman told her, “You know, we don’t want you here... we don’t want any women here.”) Schimmel faced similar discrimination at Harvard. But both pursued what would ultimately be rewarding careers of study, teaching, and writing, because they loved learning. These and other Life of Learning lectures are freely available at the American Council of Learned Society website: https://www.acls.org/ We in contracting make and manage the administrative and business arrangements needed by the organizations we support to obtain the materials, supplies, systems, services, information (“data”), and construction they need to accomplish their missions. To do that well we, too, must become learned in our field. We must go beyond OJT and official online courses. We must pursue lives of learning. I was lucky to have been taught by my superiors and colleagues at what was the Air Force Space and Missile Systems Organization (SAMSO), now the Space Force Space Systems Command (SSC), and by Professors Ralph C. Nash and the John Cibinic of The George Washington University. I faced nothing like the challenges faced by Professors Schimmel and Vendler. My greatest challenge was my own immaturity, sloth, and stupidity. I hope you will read, enjoy, and find inspiration in the stories of these two intrepid, learned, and successful professionals. What professional challenges they faced and overcame! What professional lives they led! Haskins_2001_HelenVendler.pdf Haskins_1993_AnnemarieSchimmel.pdf

THE WHITE HOUSE, January 7, 2026 Executive Order: Prioritizing the Warfighter in Defense Contracting The White HousePrioritizing the Warfighter in Defense ContractingBy the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered: Section 1. Purpose.

True, but trust is not enough. You must commit to its nourishment and well-being.

The "right people". The deep-learners, hard-chargers, risk-takers, and OODA loopers.

I'm a prophet. Just announced: "Service acquisition leaders: Why this time will be different for defense acquisition" https://breakingdefense.com/2026/01/defense-acquisition-reform-dale-white-robert-collins-army-seiko-okano-navy-stephen-purdy-space/ Excerpt:

No, but expect the unexpected. What I will be watching for is what contracting personnel actually do after the RFO is complete. What procedures will they adopt, and whether those procedures make acquisition more timely and effective? I just read a GAO decision about the issuance of a $75.5 million task order for IT support services against a MATOC under FAR 16.5. MATOCs were the product of the Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act of 1995. The request for task order proposals was issued in July 2024, the agency got six proposals, the award decision was protested, and the GAO sustained the protest in December 18, 2025 See Solvere Technical Group, B-423785, 14-page decision: A year and a half to solicit, receive, and evaluate six proposals and settle a protest, and it's still not done. So much for reform, innovation, and streamlining. Clouds appear to be gathering on the international scene, and developments will put pressure on the acquisition workforce. How the workforce responds will affect future legislation, regulation, and managerial reaction, and thus the future of the workforce. The workforce has been through a hard time and times are still tough. Strength, resilience, and ingenuity are the themes of the days to come.

2026 Careers will be made and broken during the coming year. There will be a lot of uncertainty in the acquisition workplace. Uncertainty about rules and processes and uncertainty about careers. For some, the uncertainty will present the opportunity of a career lifetime. Who are the "some"? Those who are curious., thoughtful, and ingenious Those who get what it's all about and move out sharply in hot pursuit Those who study, learn, and are able to explain to others. Study what? Learn what? Be able to explain what to others? Concepts Principles Rules Processes Procedures Methods Techniques Who are the some? Those who move out sharply! Those who do!

@formerfed Thank you!

Thank you for that, Keith! You and FrankJon have given my new year a happy start. Now, if only I can survive being 80.

I hate the phrase "tool in our toolbox." It's acquisition Madison Avenue𑁋something out of Contract Management magazine. The most important tool in any human's "toolbox" is their mind. It's the tool we must hone, master, and learn to use effectively.

@FrankJon My man!!! Someone has actually looked at a book I recommended. My professional life is not absurd, a la Sisyphus! Seriously, Thank you!

@Motorcity By "accept" do you mean we should uncritically take whatever AI gives us?

What else would it be? Are you suggesting that value is an objective measure, probably true?

@KeithB18 I don't know you mean by that. Please explain. Are you saying that qualitative value judgments cannot be described with numbers?

What do you mean by "qualitative decisions"? How should such decisions be made?

@formerfed 👍

@formerfed I don't understand. What does "work closely" mean? With whom or what would you work closely? Work to accomplish what?

@Motorcity I hope that's not true. Because if it is, it doesn't say good things about "contracting personnel". Expediting contractor selection and contract formation processes can lead to this: https://www.gao.gov/products/b-423785 Protest sustained. December 18, 2025. Merry Christmas! 🎄 What happened? The agency didn't understand the legal meaning of a key sentence in its own solicitation. Look, Motorcity--AI is coming, whether we want it or not. Don Mansfield convinced me of that years ago. Used by the right people in the right way it may provide benefits. Probably will. But that remains to be seen, and we won't know for years, either the good or the bad. I hope the incompetent know they are incompetent, but don't expect AI to be the cure for what ails them. I hope they work to fix themselves. They can do it if they try.

My question for you was: "If contracting personnel are not competent at writing, would they be competent at reviewing and editing?" Or should they just publish whatever AI gives them?

I write for legal publications. I have written books and for periodicals. Several hundred publications. And writing, reviewing, and editing are not all "one package," if by that you mean the author has the final say on all three.

@Motorcity What do you mean by contract "writing"? Most contract text is in governmentwide or agency-specific standard clauses in regulations. Those have been selected via automation for years, with varying results. AI could improve the speed and accuracy of those selections with the right input. Then there are fill-in-the-blanks on standard forms. Ho-hum. I guess you could say that developing contract line items is "writing." That involves some creativity. Have you seen a demonstration of AI doing that? Contract-specific administrative/instructional text, although much of that is boilerplate or cut-and-paste. Otherwise, the only real contract "writing" is the writing of acquisition-unique statements of work, performance work statements, and hardware and software specifications. But those are typically written by requirements personnel. That's a classic matter of technical/legal drafting. Not many people like writing and even fewer are good at it, so it's likely that requirements personnel will try AI, with results of varying quality and acceptability. If you're talking about solicitations (RFPs, IFBs, RFQs), there are instructions and descriptions of evaluation factors. I suspect that those are mostly cut-and-pasties, but AI might do that. What do you say? If contracting personnel are not competent at writing, would they be competent at reviewing and editing?

I would let managers nominate candidates to be CO, but require that selection be made by a panel of senior executives (SES). I would evaluate managers in part based on the quality of their nominees. Why that approach? Because I want the CO position to be one of high prestige, authority, discretion, and responsibility. Oh, and I would redesign the Certificate of Appointment.

If you are basing that on Eric Schmidt's claims, you might want to investigate. https://www.vox.com/2017/5/8/15584268/eric-schmidt-alphabet-automation-atm-bank-teller And ATMs are not AI as it is being developed today. Watch for robot tellers.

Organizational knowledge is the cumulative knowledge of the individual members of the organization. Managers must impress upon their members that they are individually responsible to learn their jobs and strive for expertise. They should evaluate their members on their knowledge and performance.The members cannot wait for their employers to somehow provide it. Read (100 professional pages a week, minimum). Observe. Think. Learn. Adapt. Think again. Congress should enact fewer laws and agencies write fewer regulations. Appoint fewer COs and select candidates on the basis of rigorous assessment of their ethics, knowledge, fidelity, judgment, and output quality. No exceptions. No handouts. Make every CO appointment excepted service. Assign each CO to manage a team of contract specialists. Have high expectations. Rigorously audit and reconsider each CO appointment annually. Consider COs to be the acquisition equivalent of elite military special operators: people you know you can count on to pursue America's best interests honestly and fairly. Is our federal government capable of establishing and maintaining a program like that??? (Should I send this to Pete Hegseth?)

See this: https://www.shipleywins.com/webinars/the-state-of-ai-in-proposal-development-whats-working-whats-not-and-what-you-need-to-know