ALTERNATIVE ACQUISITION
"A major near-peer competition is in full swing. The DOD must act immediately to implement a true innovation strategy."
other-transaction authority. For example, “the Federal Procure- ment Data System Next Generation was not set up to track consortium OTs or individual consortium projects and there was no guidance on how to award the projects to a consortium.”
NEAR TO FAR Where other-transaction authority ends is where FAR-based contracts have to begin. Tat's where the revision of the DOD 5000 Instruction series, pushed by Ellen Lord, then the under- secretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment (USD A&S), and the Adaptive Acquisition Framework (AAF) come in. Tat framework outlines six “pathways” for acquisition. One of those is the middle tier of acquisition, which, like other transactions, is also intended for prototyping and quick reaction.
According to Dan Ward, outcome lead for defense acceleration at MITRE Corp.'s Innovation Toolkit team and an acquisition expert who helped develop the framework, “Tese are all behav- iors that reflect a deeper shift in the larger acquisition culture, and that is a shift towards speed, thrift and simplicity.”
In talking about alternative acquisition, Ward said, “Te basic premise behind the AAF is there's more than one way to do acqui- sitions. And we're just getting that concept out into the acquisition ecosystem. I think it is a tremendous step forward."
Te shift toward alternative acquisition, he said, won't happen overnight. “Change is hard and change takes time.” Instead of just doing things one way, “being in a situation where you have to choose between alternatives, and then you have to learn from those experiences, and use that to inform your next set of deci- sions,” leads to real culture change.
According to Ward, the framework tailors contracting to fit six well-known “pathways” to help contracting officers model contracts for a given type of acquisition—from urgent to major acquisition on the materiel side, a software path, a business system path and a path for services.
BOTH SIDES
An author who retired from the Air Force and now works on the industry side of acquisition, Dan Ward was among those who assisted in the overhaul and streamlining of the DOD 5000 series of instructions and development of the Adaptive Acquisition Framework.
Te old model of tailoring was, Ward said, like making a list of 100 things you have to do, then, "What two or three things are you going to remove? And nobody wants to take their straw off the camel's back.” In the more adaptive world of the frame- work, "with middle tier," Ward said, "it's very explicitly adopted a tailor-in process."
Still, other transactions and the AAF are not cures for what ails defense acquisition. Tat's a far thornier question.
EVENTUALLY, ALL ROADS LEAD TO THE FAR In many cases, the flaws in the defense acquisition system are features, not bugs. Tey are intentional. For Jon Etherton, a former Senate staffer and an expert on defense acquisition, those flaws are “boundary conditions,” a term that appeared in the 2014 National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA) report, “Path- way to Transformation,” which Etherton co-authored.
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