Vern Edwards

@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

👍

@formerfed I didn't say that GSA FSS aren't beneficial in the right situations. But given the widespread use of GSA FSS contracts (and GWACs) someone should launch a GSA and GWAC overhaul. Really, the number of pages in numerous places devoted to explaining GSA FSS and GWACs ordering procedures is ridiculous. And all in the name of innovation and streamlining. All efforts to reform contracting ultimately end up producing more rules, explanations of rules, and case law. BTW, GSA is already claiming that its latest procedural Rube Goldberg innovations will save a billion $$$ over the next few years, an assertion that no one will even try to verify, especially not GSA.

One of the first things I was taught to do as a young contract specialist was to order supplies and services from GSA schedule contracts. It took me a while. I was bewildered. I still am. I find today's GSA world to be a morass of stultifying complexity. Am I alone in feeling this way?

From the Harvard Business Review Insider (which, unfortunately, is for subscribers only): "Employees are using AI tools to create low-effort, passable looking work that ends up creating more work for their coworkers. On social media, which is increasingly clogged with low-quality AI-generated posts, this content is often referred to as “AI slop.” In the context of work, we refer to this phenomenon as “workslop.” We define workslop as AI generated work content that masquerades as good work, but lacks the substance to meaningfully advance a given task." *** "As AI tools become more accessible, workers are increasingly able to quickly produce polished output: well-formatted slides, long, structured reports, seemingly articulate summaries of academic papers by non-experts, and usable code. But while some employees are using this ability to polish good work, others use it to create content that is actually unhelpful, incomplete, or missing crucial context about the project at hand. The insidious effect of workslop is that it shifts the burden of the work downstream, requiring the receiver to interpret, correct, or redo the work. In other words, it transfers the effort from creator to receiver." *** "When asked about their experience with workslop, one individual contributor in finance described the impact of receiving work that was AI-generated: 'It created a situation where I had to decide whether I would rewrite it myself, make him rewrite it, or just call it good enough. It is furthering the agenda of creating a mentally lazy, slow-thinking society that will become wholly dependant [sic] upon outside forces.'”

I'm not an expert in software development and never awarded a software production contract, but Mark Munsell's essay makes sense to me. I do know that software production has long been problematical.

There it is! Don't ask what's different between what the old FAR said and what the new FAR says! It kills me when people ask that. It doesn't matter! Forget the old FAR! What matters is what the new FAR says. Don't wait for guidance! Just: read the new FAR, decide what you think it allows/requires you to do, talk it over with colleagues you respect for their knowledge, competence, and willingness to think new thoughts, think it through, plot a course, and develop a supporting argument for the staff naysayers (write it out for preparation and presentation), then Go for it. They want innovation, so innovate! Keep doing it! Don't let fear of criticism enter into your way of thinking. You don't have to win your first battle or every battle, but you must learn after each battle. Be a leader. Consider every battle to be an opportunity to excel.

No, it's not. It's just not as much fun as it used to be, largely due to the contracting workforce itself I hope so. For your sake(s). Government contracting is the work of planning, designing, entering into, and managing (administering) contracts for the procurement of materials, products, and services that government agencies need in order to fulfill the duties assigned to them by Congress and the President, all in accordance with statute, regulation, and sound business practice. Government contracting is a specialty largely because of the myriad statutes and regulations that govern contracting processes and procedures and the expectations of the American public. It will always be a specialty. It's not going away. It takes know-how in several action domains, and the quality of professional life for contracting officers is largely a function of their knowledge, competence, and energy. And that's where the profession has failed itself. The last thing I would want to do is work in a "contracting squadron" or "contracting agency" or staff. I would want to work for, report to, and be evaluated by the man or woman who ultimately needs the product or service. The "owner" of the requirement. My motto, on a plaque behind my office wall or cubicle partition: Just tell me what you want, when and where you want it, and how much money you've got or can get. All of you who think your work is harder now than it was when I was working are wrong. What's different is attitude, determination, and level of commitment. You think buying military space systems during the Cold War was leisurely and easy? If so, it's because you don't know the history of your profession. You'll have a golden opportunity next year to seize the day. Take it! Find a way or make one. That's the fun part. But it takes study and hard work.

Great expectations are the paving stones to power over the process. I love great expectations. I love the looks on their faces when you produce. And the phone calls you get from happy higher ups. If the people I supported didn't have great expectations, I'd suggest some. I once had a boss (a colonel who became a major general) who would give me really hard tasks. If I looked at him blankly he would say, "Consider it an opportunity to excel." I took him seriously.

By that time contracting was already a ruined career field. It became ruined because the contracting profession was not solving problems. I and others have been documenting and writing about the process of deterioration for more than 30 years. I have written about 300 articles about it in various publications, mainly in The Nash & Cibinic Report, buy also here. The contracting profession can blame itself for many (not all) of their problems. Mainly, for lack of leadership. Today, contracting has a chance to recover. The smart thinkers and hard chargers have the chance of a lifetime to seize the day. The rest will continue to be clerks. You know how I can tell the difference? The clerks ask what's the difference between the old FAR and the overhauled FAR. The smart thinkers don't care about the difference; they don't plan to think about the old FAR; they are already thinking about what they can come up with to do better work and do it faster under the new FAR. The clerks will wait for the "buying guides" from on high... and new software.

I have to laugh about "contract writing systems" (CWS). No one writes a government contract. They assemble it. Of course, someone has to write some of the parts, like the product specification, the service statement of work, the deliverable data descriptions, and special clauses. Does the contract writing system decide what those should say and them write them? I'm really asking. Does the CWS think up what must be produced or done and then write the documents that describe them? Or is "contract writing" just the selection of FAR and agency supplement standard contract clauses? What about non-standard clauses? Does the CWS think up what they should say and then write the clauses?

@C Culham Carl, I wrote that. I think. I don't know how the mix-up happened. ?????

What's bothering me about this thread is that you're not talking about contracting. You're talking bout bookkeeping. I'm coming to the realization that contracting is a dead field and a dead topic.

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: 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.

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): See Garner's Dictionary of Legal Usage, 3d ed. (2011): 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: And see United Launch Services, LLC, 14-1 BCA P 35511 (Armed Services Board of Contract Appeals): 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.

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. 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