T
he Army spent $79.6 billion in FY11 to buy essential services for Soldiers lies,
an amount
FY11 Army Services Acquisition
and their fami- representing
about two-thirds of its yearly acquisition spending. The Defense Acquisition Uni- versity (DAU) Acquisition Community Symposium April 10 at Fort Belvoir, VA, zeroed in on the process of purchasing those services.
The annual symposium, for which this year’s theme was “Understanding the Nuts and Bolts of Acquiring Services,” provided practical insights from a host of government and industry speakers on how to acquire support for Soldiers in the
But the symposium wasn’t all about dollars and cents, or even documents and milestones. A pervasive theme was communication. Good communication is important at every level, many speak- ers said, both within government and between government and industry.
DEFINING THE PROGRAM
“One of the key things I’ve noticed coming into government,” said Heidi Shyu, Acting Assistant Secretary of the Army
for Acquisition, Logistics, and
Technology, “is that our PMs [program managers] don’t take Communication 101.” Instead, Shyu said during a panel discussion of the Service Acquisition Executives, “they walk in and … dump a 1,000-piece puzzle on my desk. And through a series of questions, I start to piece together the program.
“They need to be able to tell a succinct story,” she said. “The same [applies] with acquisition strategies. You’re not get- ting paid for volume. You’re getting paid for quality.” The 1,000-piece puzzle “is going to stall your program.”
Katrina McFarland, then-President of DAU and now Assistant Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, said: “We have seen a great deal of product coming in that should not be the product com- ing in.” Documents need to be concise, product-driven, and clear on timelines, she said.
Frank Kendall, Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics (USD(AT&L)) and at the time Acting USD(AT&L), noted the need for ongoing communication between the acquisition and require- ments communities. “There’s got to be a strong dialogue, and it’s got to start at the very beginning” in order to achieve
Knowledge-Based Facility
Electronics and Communications
Equipment-Related Transportation Medical
Construction
Research and Development
0 5 8.0B 10 15 20 25 30 $Billions
(SOURCE: Office of the Senior Services Manager, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Procurement.)
2.2B 1.0B 15.3B $23.3 Billion 5.4B 5.0B
8 Services Portfolio Groups; 6 mandated for efficiencies initiative
27.2B 15.5B $56.2 Billion
Shyu noted DAU’s concerted effort to build acquisition professionals’ skills in writing requirements and other docu- mentations,
with numerous training tools. (See “Tool Kit” on Page 137.)
solid, reasonable requirements, he said in his keynote address.
A number of speakers stressed that com- munication within
the government is
also crucial to building relationships within the acquisition team—among the other stakeholders—to focus together on achieving results.
TALKING WITH INDUSTRY On communication outside the govern- ment, Kendall emphasized that it
is a
misconception to think that government - resentatives about an acquisition program.
RFP [request for proposal] goes out … you should. We reached out to industry extensively with the Better Buying Power Initiatives, and we got a better product as a result. Getting information from
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