A student at the US Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School in the Technical Exploitation Course processes a laptop computer during training at Fort Bragg, North Carolina October 22, 2019. (US Army photo by K. Kassens)
WASHINGTON — A key Army contracting official has set an ambitious goal for the service’s technology acquisition: to trim off enough process fat to get deals signed in less than six months as opposed to the year-and-a-half or two that it currently takes.
Danielle Moyer, executive director of Army Contracting Command at Aberdeen Proving Ground, said during a panel at AUSA 2024 last week that the service plans to emphasize the use of “characteristics of need,” rather than too restrictive traditional requirements.
“When we have a problem, we want to take that problem and give it to industry, and not over prescribe contracts,” Moyer said. She suggested that instead, industry “propose back a solution, and then we determine the contract type based on your solution, instead of me predetermining everything.”
The thinking was echoed by none other than Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George, who described the improved process earlier in the conference.
“We put out a two-page characterization of needs for our network, and then we had all the experts, people who really understand this, and we have our own group of nerds that are a part of this as well, but they would actually tell us, ‘Hey, here’s what we can do, and here’s how we can do it, and this might be a better way to approach this.’ And I think we’re getting faster with that too,” George said.
Industry seems to agree with the Army’s initiative to move toward a characteristics of need approach. Tara Murphy Dougherty, CEO of defense software firm Govini, said it allows industry to be more involved in the process.
“So to the point about how restrictive requirements are and how rapidly outdated they are, what is fantastic about a characteristics of need is that it creates a focus on the warfighter from the buyer side of the problem, and it allows industry to suggest the solutions,” she said. “If you want innovation, and you know that the vast majority of the innovation in the United States today is happening in the commercial sector, then why not describe your problems and seek that input rather than describing the solution you want?”
Another way to speed up the contract award process is to add more incentives and disincentives in contracts, Moyer said. The way the award process is set up now, vendors are often too eager to make something more affordable even if it’s less effective.
“We want affordable contracts, but sometimes we want the best thing, and then how do we incentivize you with the best thing once you prove it right?” Moyer said.
She added that her office is looking at ways to hand out incentives for vendors who showed their product was “better and faster” than others.
Christian Brose, chief strategy officer of Anduril Industries, agreed with Moyer, saying incentives and the focus on needs, rather than requirements, would help vendors stay focused on the service’s mission and help deliver products at a faster speed.
“Someone from industry will say, look, I delivered all of the, you know, kind of pieces of my contract. It’s like, ‘Yeah, but the problem didn’t get solved, the mission is still unfulfilled.’ I think how we get to a better velocity is really focusing on creating the incentives to deliver outcomes, recognizing that those outcomes are going to need to change as a function of time,” Brose said during the panel.
Moyer said the Army also plans to focus on more demos and less paperwork.
She said this allows vendors to actually show off their capabilities instead of showing how well they can fill out a lengthy proposal, which can take large quantities of time as they are are usually hundreds of pages.
“We want you to come demo like, what do you really do and show me?” she asked. “There should be real constant feedback in some tech demonstrations, versus ‘Did you write [the proposal] really well?’ You probably used some AI to write the proposal anyway.”
She added that the Army has already gotten away from the “hundreds of pages” of written proposals, which she reiterated were not the best measurement as to how a vendor will perform.
“You probably get kicked out of a competition because your font was wrong. [We’re] probably gonna change that,” she said.
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