Webinar: Contracting for Flexibility (Agile Development) by Department of Homeland Security/OCFO

About This Webinar

With the rapidly changing world of Information Technology, it is critical to ensure our development processes and underlying contracts are nimble and account for changing requirements throughout the development process. Traditionally, contracts were multi-year awards and contained detailed requirements leaving little/no flexibility after the contract was awarded. This routinely caused contract delays during development and resulted in a system that was late, over budget, and obsolete even before the initial deployment. To keep pace with changing requirements, we need to rethink our contracting approach to allow flexibility post contract award. Since there is an infinite number of ways to contract for agile development, each acquisition team needs to examine their unique requirements and find the “right” acquisition approach when balancing flexibility and risk. In this presentation, we will review the requirements from multiple programs and agencies and provide the acquisition approach they used to be able to rapidly respond to changes post-contract award. In addition to providing various operational examples, we will cover the pros and cons of each approach so you can examine if one of these approaches might be a good fit for your program.

Presenters

Matthew Kennedy

Senior IT Program Manager

Matthew R. Kennedy is a Senior IT Program Manager at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). Formerly, Matt was a Program Manager at the Army's Program Executive Office - Enterprise Information Systems (PEO-EIS) and was a Professor of Software Engineering at Defense Acquisition University (DAU) where he specialized in agile acquisition. Matt served as the Associate Director of Engineering at the National Cancer Institute’s Center for Biomedical Informatics and Information Technology and served in the U.S. Air Force as a network intelligence analyst. Matthew holds a PhD in Computer Science and Software Engineering from Auburn University.

Victor Angkico

Contracting SME

Victor Angkico is currently a Level III, GS-14, Subject Matter Expert (SME) in competitive contracting in support of the GSA Office of Professional Services and Human Capital Categories (PSHC) in Auburn, WA. In this capacity, Victor provides training and guidance to CO/CS’s and PM’s on all types and sizes of competitive contracting projects within PSHC, with a focus on those of higher dollar and complexity.

Victor started his federal civilian service in 1983, having been hired by the Naval Supply Center, Puget Sound in Bremerton, WA after graduating from the University of Washington with a BA in Business, with a concentration in Operations Management.

From December 2003 to November 2006, Victor served as the branch chief at the GSA Federal Supply Service, Management Services Center, LOGWORLD/Energy branch, in Auburn, WA. In 2004 Victor solicited and awarded the GSA Indian Trust Accounting Division (ITAD) A-76 competitive sourcing study. In 2006, Victor solicited, negotiated, and awarded a highly competitive (30 offers were received) $500M multiple award Blanket Purchase Agreement (BPA) in support of the Department of Homeland Services (DHS). This BPA was one of the first ever DHS wide strategic sourcing vehicles at the newly formed Agency.

From November 2006 to April 2016, Victor served as a Senior Contracting Officer at GSA FEDSIM. During this period, Victor solicited, evaluated, and awarded approximately 15 cost type and T&M contracts, most well in excess of $100M. Of note, in 2010, Victor solicited, evaluated, and awarded several multi-year (10 years) multi-million dollar FAR Part 12 Open Market Small Business Set-aside procurements in support of the CDC. Due to the success of these acquisitions, Victor received both the GSA “Excellence in Acquisition Award for Innovation”, and the Office of Small Business Utilization “Above and Beyond Award” in 2011.

Kirsten Green

Acquisition Strategist - United States Digital Service

Kirsten is an Acquisition Strategist in the Procurement Community of Practice at the United States Digital Service (USDS)--a federal agency made of technologists and acquisition experts working to transform critical federal government public-facing IT/Digital Services, and rethink how the government buys and builds digital services using agile and modular contracting methodologies.

She has over 21 years’ of federal service. The majority of her career has been in contracting working as a warranted contracting officer for the Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, GSA FAS Region 8, and has worked on every type of government contract. In 2016, she helped stand up GSA’s Technology and Transformation Service branch.

In 2015, she was selected to participate in the Digital IT Acquisition Professional Training (DITAP) pilot. DITAP is a 6-month long training and development program that teaches federal government acquisition professionals how to design innovative and flexible procurements for IT/Digital Services, and how to become change ambassadors throughout the federal government and earning a FAC-Core Plus Specialization in Digital Services (FAC-C-DS).

Her role at USDS also includes coordinating the DITAP program, participants and vendors.