TIME TO THINK


only a matter of time before we figured out how to make the best use of this new technology and took advantage of the tre- mendous capability laid before us to do more work in less time.


At the same time, we were learning how to use the new Federal Acquisition Reg- ulation (FAR), which had first appeared in the Federal Register six years earlier. Never in my wildest imagination would I believe that years later, as the DASA(P), it would be my responsibility to ensure execution of the FAR and the Army Federal Acquisition Regulation Supple- ment for the entire Army contracting community!


HILL TALK


Antonio Baines, Hardware Branch chief, Army Office of the Legislative Liaison, and Hallock wait for the Pentagon shuttle following a meeting earlier this year with U.S. House of Representatives staffers. (Photo by Kathie Scarrah, ODASA(P))


us through the war years as a result of the decision in 1989 to create an acquisi- tion corps.


FROM PAST TO FUTURE How has Army contracting changed in the past quarter-century? Where are we headed? How we’ve changed is easy; where we’re headed is a little more challenging.


For example, in 1989 we were just begin- ning to use computers in the office. Tat same year marked the genesis of the World Wide Web. We were slow to embrace this technology in contracting, not clearly understanding that it would drastically improve how we did business. I still recall the first computer terminal on our floor of 350 people at TACOM. We had to sign up in 15-minute incre- ments to use it. Tat wasn’t really a


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problem back then, because most people were still using electric typewriters and were scared to death of this new technol- ogy; they could not imagine using such a thing to accomplish our mission. It may sound silly now to those raised on com- puters, but back then they were quite the novelty. Even when we accepted these bulky machines in our workspace, it still took some time to coordinate our


“mouse reflexes” to the point where we actually saved time in whatever we were trying to accomplish.


Ten, when TACOM received large num- bers of computers, the frustration grew as we became the debuggers of our gen- eration and whined about how slow they were, how often we lost our work into the Ethernet and how much faster we could accomplish our work the “old-fashioned” way. But as with anything new, it was


THE ART OF THE DEAL Back then, what I loved most about being a contract specialist and later a contract- ing officer was the art of the negotiation. A company presented its proposal with its desired price for the item to be procured. As the government representative tasked with finalizing the price to be paid, I was responsible not only to make sure that we got a fair and reasonable price, but that the Army complied with all applicable statutes and regulations, clauses


and


provisions in putting the contract instru- ment in place.


Tis responsibility could be mind- boggling, just as it can be today, and if we happened to be working on some- thing that got higher-level attention or oversight, we often were called to the Pentagon to explain our decisions. Yet, I don’t remember the oversight being as onerous as it is today, and I don’t remember congressional interest being as acrimonious as it can be today. I attri- bute this to the technology explosion over the past two decades that allows instantaneous knowledge of just about everything. Tis knowledge allows any- one to know what is happening in time


Army AL&T Magazine October–December 2014


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