ACHIEVEMENTS IN MODERNIZATION
head of the Army's contracting activity. Supporting this enterprise approach to Army contracting allows for greater engagement with the senior contracting officials to ensure contract actions align with the senior procurement executives’ priorities. I also desig- nated specific projects as "special interest," which facilitated my involvement at crucial intervals and enabled my ability to lever- age subject matter experts to negotiate the customer's best value.
I was an early proponent for numerous intelligent automation projects to both revolutionize the Army contracting processes and energize partnerships with industry to ensure the Army was moving toward cutting-edge and relevant tools such as these:
• Pricing Insight automates manual pricing lookup processes required to analyze contractors' proposals.
• The Determination of Responsibility Assistant bot pulls contractor business information to populate a required memorandum to address contractor responsibility before making awards.
• Streamlining Acquisition Requirements auto-populates common data across all necessary contract documents.
By using these tools, Army contracting professionals save tremendous procurement acquisition lead times, decrease manual touch time, increase compliance, enhance user engage- ment and deliver operational efficiencies across contracting enterprise.
the Army
Based on my experience as a small business owner, and with the help of the DASA for Research and Technology (DASA(RT)), I launched the Expeditionary Technology Search (xTechSearch) program, a competition targeting small businesses to uncover novel dual-use science and technology solutions to tackle the Army's most critical modernization challenges. Initiated in 2018, xTechSearch has provided increasing non-dilutive seed prizes to select small businesses to proceed in the competition.
In addition to the prizes, the xTechSearch program provides education, mentorship and networking opportunities to help integrate small businesses into the Army science and technol- ogy ecosystem. In 2020, we launched the xTech: COVID-19 Ventilator Challenge to innovators around the globe, to support our nation’s efforts to combat COVID-19 and to continually seek out innovative technologies to best protect Soldiers, civil- ians and their families, maintain force readiness to meet global challenges, and provide support to the Federal Emergency Management Agency-led national COVID-19 response. (See "Free, Urgent and Scarce," Army AL&T Fall 2020, page 66.)
10 Army AL&T Magazine Winter 2021
DASA DEC developed and concluded the first-ever agreement to continuously develop a virtual cyber training range in collaboration with Australia, the Persistent Cyber Training Environment.
SEEING IN THE DARK
Soldiers from 3rd Squadron, 89th Cavalry Regiment began training on the new Enhanced Night Vision Goggle – Binocular (ENVG-B) in June 2020. The ENVG-B low-rate initial production contract was awarded 10 months ahead of schedule. (Photo by Christy Graham, Fort Polk Public Affairs Office)
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