Helping Innovation Survive Acquisition: the Contractor Perspective on Acquisition Reform

Abstract

The contractor perspective is critical to acquisition reform options because they experience daily the challenges of navigating DoD bureaucracy to submit a proposal, get approvals, and travel across the valley of death. This project is reviewing how contractors are experiencing the Adaptive Acquisition Framework and other recent acquisition innovations. Research questions include: How have contractors experienced the alternative acquisition approaches that the government is using? Do they see any difference from traditional major capability acquisition? What are remaining opportunities for improvement? Are contractors seeing particular acquisition approaches used where others might be more effective (e.g., contracts using the software pathway, where a service contract might yield more innovation)? The goal is to highlight the contractor perspective in how the government could more effectively acquire capabilities.