Emerging Technologies and Acquisition

How Blockchain, RPA, Data Analytics, and AI are Enabling Federal Procurement

Transformation

Emerging Technology Community of Interest / Acquisition Community of Interest

Date Released: April 26, 2021

Synopsis

One of the major drivers of procurement reforms in recent times has been the

advent of technology in the federal acquisition process. From being an enabler to

becoming a key driver of procurement’s strategic transformaƟon ― technology is

allowing procurement organizations to demonstrate true transformative effects

acrossthe federal government. With technology, procurement will no longer be just

a purchasing or sourcing function, but instead transform into playing the role of an

innovator, integrator, and collaborator, impacting agencies in myriad ways and

driving overall performance for government IT management.

New and emerging technologies such as blockchain, robotic process automation

(RPA), artificial intelligence (AI), and big data can help procurement find new

avenuesto transform, and in the process, drive greaterspending visibility, increased

compliance, enhanced accuracy, as well as achieve significant costsavings. As digital

procurement and procurement transformation gain momentum, procurement

organizations must identify and implement the right technology that will bring the

desired value. This paper will look at the various technologies being implemented

throughout procurement organizations across the federal government today.
 

 

 

 

 

 

How Emerging Technology is Transforming Federal Procurement

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How Emerging Technology is Transforming Federal Procurement

American Council for Technology-Industry Advisory Council (ACT-IAC)

The American Council for Technology-Industry Advisory Council (ACT-IAC) is a non-profit

educational organization established to accelerate government mission outcomes through

collaboration, leadership and education. ACT-IAC provides a unique, objective, and trusted forum

where government and industry executives are working together to improve public services and

agency operations through the use of technology. ACT-IAC contributes to better communication

between government and industry, collaborative and innovative problem solving, and a more

professional and qualified workforce.

The information, conclusions, and recommendations contained in this publication were

produced by volunteers from government and industry who share the ACT-IAC vision of a more

effective and innovative government. ACT-IAC volunteers represent a wide diversity of

organizations (public and private) and functions. These volunteers use the ACT-IAC collaborative

process, refined over forty years of experience, to produce outcomes that are consensus-based.

To maintain the objectivity and integrity of its collaborative process, ACT-IAC welcomes the

participation of all public and private organizations committed to improving the delivery of public

services through the effective and efficient use of technology. For additional information, visit

the ACT-IAC website at www.actiac.org.

Emerging Technology Community of Interest and Acquisition Community of Interest

This paper is a joint effort between the ACT-IAC Emerging Technology and Acquisition

Communities of Interest (COI). The Emerging Technology COI mission is to provide an energetic,

collaborative consortium comprised of leading practitioners in data science, technology, and

research, engaged with industry, academia, and public officials and executives focused on

emerging and leading technologies, which transform public sector capabilities. The Acquisition

COI mission is to connect Government (procurement and program) and industry to new ideas

and approachesto improve Federal acquisition in a forum that enables collaboration, encourages

exploration and innovation, and generates results that have impact and endure.

Disclaimer

This document has been prepared to contribute to a more effective, efficient, and innovative

government. The information contained in this report is the result of a collaborative process in

which several individuals participated. This document does not – nor is it intended to – endorse

or recommend any specific technology, product, or vendor. Moreover, the views expressed in

this document do not necessarily represent the official views of the individuals and organizations

that participated in its development. Every effort has been made to present accurate and reliable

information in this report. However, neither ACT-IAC nor its contributors assume any

responsibility for consequences resulting from the use of the information herein.

Copyright

©American Council for Technology, 2021. This document may not be quoted, reproduced and/or

distributed unless credit is given to the American Council for Technology-Industry Advisory

Council.

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How Emerging Technology is Transforming Federal Procurement

Table of Contents

Introduction and Executive Summary ............................................................................................ 7

Approach Methodology.................................................................................................................. 9

Identifying Emerging Technologies............................................................................................... 11

Solutions Identified....................................................................................................................... 12

Pilot IRS DATA Act, Internal Revenue Service......................................................................... 12

Current State..................................................................................................................... 12

Description of the Portfolio .............................................................................................. 13

Constraints........................................................................................................................ 13

Transformation Enablers .................................................................................................. 14

Stakeholders ..................................................................................................................... 14

Technology Selection........................................................................................................ 14

Accomplishments to Date................................................................................................. 15

Artificial Intelligence for Past Performance Prototypes and Piloting Initiative, Department of

Homeland Security, Procurement Innovation Lab ................................................................. 16

Description of the System or Portfolio ............................................................................. 16

Future State ...................................................................................................................... 17

Constraints........................................................................................................................ 18

Transformation Enablers .................................................................................................. 19

Stakeholders ..................................................................................................................... 19

Business Process Model.................................................................................................... 20

HHS and the BUYSMARTER Initiative...................................................................................... 22

Current State..................................................................................................................... 22

Future State ...................................................................................................................... 23

Constraints........................................................................................................................ 27

Transformation Enablers .................................................................................................. 27

Stakeholders ..................................................................................................................... 27

Business Process Model.................................................................................................... 27

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How Emerging Technology is Transforming Federal Procurement

Organizational Readiness.................................................................................................. 27

Technology Selection........................................................................................................ 27

Lessons Learned................................................................................................................ 27

Conclusion..................................................................................................................................... 28

People produce permanent processes................................................................................... 28

A starting point for today’s practitioners............................................................................... 29

Next steps for a team new to these technologies.................................................................. 30

Authors.......................................................................................................................................... 31

References .................................................................................................................................... 32

Table of Figures

Figure 1: Notional Acquisition Life Cycle ........................................................................................ 7

Figure 2: CPARS AI Initiative Project Timelines ............................................................................ 18

Figure 3: BUYSMARTER Before and After State ........................................................................... 22

Figure 4: BUYSMARTER Business Philosophy ............................................................................... 23

Figure 5: BUYSMARTER UI/UX ...................................................................................................... 23

Figure 6: BUYSMARTER UI Example 1........................................................................................... 24

Figure 7: BUYSMARTER UI Example 2........................................................................................... 25

Figure 8: BUYSMARTER UI Example 3........................................................................................... 25

Figure 9: BUYSMARTER UI Example 4........................................................................................... 26

Figure 10: BUYSMARTER UI Example 5......................................................................................... 26

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,

or case law), Executive order or other regulation, Government members of the Team

should not assume it is prohibited. Rather, absence of direction should be interpreted as

permitting the Team to innovate and use sound business judgment that is otherwise

consistent with law and within the limits of their authority. Contracting officers should

take the lead in encouraging business process innovations and ensuring that business

decisions are sound.

Figure 1: Notional Acquisition Life Cycle

ot only is the acquisition workforce entrusted with obtaining the American taxpayer the best

ossible value in the procurements they deliver, the individuals who assist those members of the

cquisition workforce the participants in the acquisition process play an essential role in

How Emerging Technology is Transforming Federal Procurement

Introduction and Executive Summary

If the acquisition workforce had an “official” mission statement that could guide their efforts, it

would most likely be summed up in these two paragraphs from the Federal Acquisition

Regulation (FAR): 1

The vision for the Federal Acquisition System is to deliver on a timely basis the best value

product or service to the customer, while maintaining the public’s trust and fulfilling

public policy objectives. Participants in the acquisition process should work together as a

team and should be empowered to make decisions within their area of responsibility.

Along with this, the FAR outlines:2

Procurement policies and proceduresthat are used by members of the Acquisition Team.

If a policy or procedure, or a particular strategy or practice, is in the best interest of the

Government and is not specifically addressed in the FAR nor prohibited by law (statute

N

p

a - -

achieving that mission.

Similarly, if the acquisition workforce had a mandate, it would be to use any and all means

available to them within the four corners of the law in order to innovate and implement those

processes and procedures which allow for quick adoption of emerging technologies, as well as

adaption within and throughout the public sector. In fact, for those teams with the budget and

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How Emerging Technology is Transforming Federal Procurement

staff constraints that many smaller programs and projects have, using the freedom to pursue

those ideas is necessary for success.

To that end, the use of emerging technologies to transform federal procurement has accelerated

under the direction of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy (OFPP). OFPP is a component of

the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) whose mission is to provide overall direction for

government-wide procurement policies, regulations, and procedures and to promote economy,

efficiency, and effectiveness in acquisition processes.3 Joanie Newhart, associate administrator

of acquisition workforce programs within OFPP, said at the FedScoop 2019 IT Modernization

Summit, that her office and the federal Chief Acquisition Officer Council are “Focused on

emerging technology and how can we use it in acquisition. We think it’s going to explode this

year,so we want to get in front of it and use it wisely.”4 Thisshift in using technology to transform

a traditionally manual, paper-based process such as federal procurement had its roots in the

previous administration’s President’s Management Agenda (PMA). That PMA outlined the

strategies needed to address the critical challenges where the federal government as a whole

still operates in the past.5

Further, the PMA outlined various Cross-Agency Priorities—or CAP—goals for each of central

areas of transforming government.6 As stated on the website for the CAP Goals: 7

As a subset of Presidential priorities, CAP Goals are used to implement the President’s

Management Agenda and are complemented by other cross-agency coordination and

goal-setting efforts. CAP Goals are updated or revised every four years with each

Presidential Administration’s term.

Furthermore, the PMA outlined:

CAP Goals fall into four categories: key drivers of transformation, cross-cutting priority

areas, functional priority areas and mission priority areas.

This mission and this mandate are part of the reason why the United States of America serves as

the global leader in emerging and innovative technologies. In fact, the FAR provides public

servants with the platform to partner with the engine of the American economy - those

businesses, both large and small, that develop these advancements. This freedom to improve

and iterate upon existing procurement processes is an essential component of keeping our

position as global leaders. It is also essential to helping ensure the government promotes those

technologies and tools that provide the greatest return on the investment being made with

taxpayer dollars.

Further, these technology initiatives were also directly aligned with the CAP Goal: “Shifting from

Low-Value to High-Value Work”8 and “Frictionless Acquisition”, respectively.9 These two CAP

Goals combined created the vision and the future of federal procurement through shifts in

technology, practices, and culture through the continued action plans and focused leadership

being executed to realize these goals. However, the goal statement of the “Frictionless

Acquisition” CAP Goal encapsulated the future state of federal procurement where emerging

technologies can have a major impact:

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How Emerging Technology is Transforming Federal Procurement

“The Federal Government will deliver commercial items at the same speed as the

marketplace & manage customers’ delivery expectations for acquisitions of noncommercial items by breaking down barriersto entry using modern business practices and

technologies.”10

In order to effectively make use of capabilities in emerging technologies for use in future

procurement, it isimperative that those who participate in acquiring emerging technologies keep

in mind who the ultimate end users of their procurements are. Whether it isthe American citizen

interacting with an agency or department, an employee benefiting from automation or other

assistive technologies, or even industry partners, understanding who it is that will ultimately

derive value from the work being performed is key.

Defining that value being derived by that ultimate end user is the first step an innovative

acquisition process participant must take. This will lead to a number of goals being satisfied

including but not limited to:

 Developing requirements around the true objectives of the project.

 Selecting evaluation factors that will ensure focus is placed on technical brilliance.

 Sharing the solicitation with communities and in locations that will encourage

participation from those sources in industry who have innovative solutions, but not

necessarily established firms with a federal sector business footprint (i.e., non-traditional

firms).11

It is hoped that the concepts discussed in this white paper will help any participant in the

procurement process, whether directly involved in the acquisition itself, or indirectly as support

staff. Additionally, that the practical advice and frameworks presented here provide members of

the acquisition workforce, whether new or experienced, a starting point for discussions within

their agencies and departments on the art-of-the-possible. Finally, this white paper will also begin

to connect those individuals who wish to learn more about what we have presented to one

another, as a robust network of collaborators will be the quickest way to promote innovation

that sticks.

In closing, having developed these during a period which saw the regular forces of daily

operations and the irregular forces of a national emergency declaration, combine to impact the

American public in profound ways. The ACT-IAC Emerging Technology and Acquisition

Communities of Interest proudly recognize the members who volunteered the precioustime they

had remaining after supporting their agencies to this effort.

Approach Methodology

Understanding the importance of utilizing emerging technologies, both within general efforts to

support the mission of a program, as well as to support the procurement process itself, a project

approach, broken into phases, was utilized. By outlining this process, the hope is that others can

verify, validate, and even replicate the information utilized to derive these conclusions. With four

different phases, during which a number of different individuals graciously assisted the core

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How Emerging Technology is Transforming Federal Procurement

group of authors, this research was performed with a degree of mindfulness as it related to the

FAR and the limitations -- as well as the flexibilities -- it offers.

Seeing that all supplements build off this body of regulations, it serves as the foundation for any

and all efforts that can be implemented to improve the efforts that make up the acquisition

lifecycle and the procurement process in general. With that holistic view in mind, the viewpoints

of those involved in developing requirements, acquisition planning, contracting, and post-award

contract administration were required from the private sector and public sectors. Public sector

individuals held positionsthat constitute those considered part of the acquisition workforce,such

as Contracting Officers, Contracting Specialists, Contracting Officer Representatives, Project

Managers, and Program Managers.

With the current state defined and key performance indicators (KPIs) ready to be measured, the

next phase involved interviews with individuals from the various agencies represented in the use

cases (Internal Revenue Service, Department of Homeland Security, and Health and Human

Services) who held the roles identified as essential to understanding the issues being researched.

These interviews were designed to be free-flowing conversations that included a set of

predefined questions while permitting the interviewee to provide their observations on current

workflows. They took place among four government settings and among enough of the private

sector to provide a review of cross-industry leading practices.

The intention of these interviews was to identify key friction points across several domains,

including processes, people, and policies. Through these discussions, a review of current and

emerging technologies and capabilities was performed, identifying the factors that contribute to

successful implementations. These factors identified were broadly categorized into those that

should be considered for ongoing use, as well as those which had room for improvement.

Similarly, it was important to use these interviews to identify the actual key technologies,

processes, and people that are implicated in any discussion related to the procurement and use

of these advances. The technologies identified included blockchain, robotic process automation

(RPA), data analytics, and artificial intelligence (AI). The processes implicated were those related

to training of the workforce itself, application of advanced techniques, and continuous

improvement of business workflows and processesthemselves. The people involved are the endusers, dedicated trainers, technical subject matter experts (SMEs) involved in the

implementation of these advances, and staff that can support programs with the integration of

technologies throughout the enterprise.

With these discussions completed, Phase 3 involved the vetting of the technology, people, and

process combinations that were suggested. The various impacts, both measured and

theoretically possible, were analyzed to find those that suggested they would provide a positive

impact to those KPIs. Using industry and government examples to provide the qualitative and

quantitative data necessary for this analysis, several use cases and organizations were identified.

Once that analysis was completed, Phase 4 involved writing this paper. Much like the concept of

Continuous Acquisition Improvement, discussed further below, the recommendations and

conclusions of this white paper should be considered ripe and ready for the next iteration. This

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How Emerging Technology is Transforming Federal Procurement

document should be considered a living document, with nothing permanent or sacrosanct. What

works today may not work tomorrow, and similarly, that perfect state tomorrow may need

something different done today.

Identifying Emerging Technologies

As determined through the phased approach of this project, the four key emerging technologies

identified as having the potential to improve the government are blockchain, RPA, data

analytics, and AI.

Blockchain, along with the concept of smart contracts and ledgers, have been used in several

successful applications in industry and government alike. In the public sector, one of the more

intriguing applications of blockchain technology to the procurement process is the work being

performed by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) “Accelerate” program. Asthe

first blockchain-based program in the federal government to get an authority to operate (ATO),

HHS not only provides technical advances, but also procurement advances that have shaped

several important conversations about what is possible.

RPA, which has been utilized by agencies such as the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), General

Services Administration (GSA), Department of Labor (DOL), and the Army to create a number of

different bots (e.g., Contractor Responsibility Determination, Section 508 Clause Review, etc.)

has provided immediate results. Furthermore, the way in which these bots were developed,

procured, and integrated into these agencies has provided several opportunities to implement

new technologies. The sheer amount of data that can be collected using these bots can be used

as an opportunity rather than an end goal.

Collecting that data, whether in order to satisfy requirements outlined in the Open, Public,

Electronic and Necessary (OPEN) Government Data Act, the PMA, or any other number of

statutes and policies, allows for several data analytics related advances. The collection,

organization, and visualization of all this data to be used in decision-making processes is one of

the more tangible forms of emerging technology. It also makes it one of the easier advances to

misunderstand when it comes to the importance of applying modern practices to the evaluation

of the services and products associated with its use. This data is critical as it holds valuable

insights and patterns that can help organizations assess potential risks, find new business

opportunities, and most importantly, improve the overall efficiency and productivity of

organizations.12

AI and Machine Learning (ML) allow data scientists to delve deep into massive volumes of data

and uncover meaningful insights from it. Once the differences in modern data analytics versus

previous iterations of the technology are understood, AI becomes possible. As one of the latest

entrants into the emerging technology space, and one of the most compelling in terms of

potential and importance, it is absolutely necessary for the public and private sector to work

together to determine the optimal and most efficient path forward in terms of buying, using, and

enhancing AI. The reports published by the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence

(NSCAI) leave no doubt as to the need for the acquisition workforce to be prepared to use and

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How Emerging Technology is Transforming Federal Procurement

procure AI, and the hope is that the conclusions of this research will be one of the building blocks

towards establishing that necessary competency.

Solutions Identified

Industry best practices adapted for public sector use cases have shown the identified categories

of impediments are not only surmountable, but that there are several ways in which teams can

implement their optimal solutions. The ultimate result is utilizing agile techniques in the

processes associated with emerging technologies and modernization at an agency. In

acquisitions, this can be done by treating the procurement package as a product while

incentivizing and encouraging positive behaviors and thinking when it comes to continuous

improvement.

Pilot IRS DATA Act, Internal Revenue Service

One part of modernization efforts at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is focused on improving

financial and non-financial procurement data. To improve the accuracy and transparency of data

in the Federal Procurement Data System – Next Generation (FPDS-NG), as well asthe compliance

with the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act of 2014 (DATA Act), IRS launched its DATA

ACT initiative. The solutions to the project were focused on reducing manual work, shifting

personnel from low-value to high-value tasks, in conjunction with Office of Management and

Budget memorandum M-18-23, “Shifting From Low-Value to High-Value Work”, and the PMA’s

CAP Goal number six; “Shifting From Low-Value To High-Value Work”.13

Current State

The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) conducts audits of the IRS’s

compliance with the DATA Act. The DATA Act requires federal agencies to report financial and

award data in accordance with established data standards. The data is then published on

USAspending.gov, for use by decision-makers and the American taxpayer. The 57 DATA Act data

elements14 include Parent Award ID, Current Total Value of Award, Action Date, and Primary

Place of Performance Congressional District. In its Fiscal Year 2019 report, TIGTA reported

inaccuracies acrossthe 57 DATA Act data elements, ranging from 5 to 52 percent.15 In its planned

corrective action responding to the audit, the IRS committed to develop a quality assurance

review process to ensure DATA Act information is accurate.

The data that IRS certifies, and TIGTA audits for DATA Act compliance, is derived from the IRS

data in FPDS-NG. Prior to Pilot IRS DATA Act, a senior level IRS employee would manually correct

FPDS-NG as needed in response to TIGTA audit errors, inquiries from the Office of the Chief

Financial Officer (OCFO), and errors identified within IRS Procurement. Manual corrections took

roughly three minutes per data element. Applying the TIGTA audit accuracy error rate to a year’s

worth of IRS contract actions, it would take nearly two full-time equivalent staff to correct data

element errors.

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How Emerging Technology is Transforming Federal Procurement

Description of the Portfolio

According to the Pilot IRS webpage on IRS.gov: 16

Pilot IRS is an iterative procurement technique focused on outcomes that allows the

Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to test new technologies on faster timelines. If a solution

fails to meet expectations, then it will not proceed to the next phase of funding. This

methodology creates an agile approach to identify, test, and deploy solutionsthat support

the mission, regardless of whether the solution, technology, or service currently resides

within the IRS or the federal government.

Like all federal agencies, the IRS is under several mandates to modernize its operations and its

mission of administering the nation’s tax code. However, the IRS lacks any research and

development capability or special acquisition authorities such as other transaction authority

(OTA) or a commercial solution opening program to rapidly procure emerging technologies for

these modernization efforts. Further, as previously mentioned, the IRS does not have funds

allocated for research and development.17

To solve this issue, the Office of the Chief Procurement Officer (OCPO) used FAR Parts 12 and 13

to create Pilot IRS; a phased, incremental funding procurement initiative that will let the agency

test new technologies on faster timelines with reduced risk. This initiative was also in keeping

with modular contracting best practices, as outlined in guidance provided by the OFPP.18 Under

Pilot IRS, the agency issues a proposal under what isreferred to as a “Solution Challenge”,specific

problems that the IRS is trying to solve with emerging technologies. The IRS issued a request for

proposals for the first solution challenge, DATA Act Improvements, on August 23, 2019.19 The

Pilot IRS DATA Act had three goals:

1. Improve the data which resides in FPDS-NG.

2. Limit the amount of manual work required by government personnel in improving the IRS

data.

3. Achieve incremental improvement in IRS data in the near term – the aspirational goal was

to improve data no later than 31 December 2019.

Constraints

The Pilot IRS DATA Act team faced four general constraints: culture, budget, security, and

information technology onboarding, especially the Enterprise Life Cycle (ELC). Culture and budget

remain mostly within IRS Procurement’s control and have therefore been more navigable. To

manage concerns surrounding use of robotics process automation solutions, the team has

worked to socialize the high benefits and low risks of the solution. Examples included:

 Held demonstrations of the solutions to showcase capabilities and controls.

 Controlled the pace of corrections and completed full quality checks of results.

 Notified contracting personnel before making any FPDS-NG change, to prevent any

surprises or fear of data manipulation.

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How Emerging Technology is Transforming Federal Procurement

To date, IRS Procurement has funded the Pilot IRS DATA Act. As the project is a top priority for

IRS Procurement, the program was able to secure the necessary funding. This may become more

challenging for Phases 4.1 (scaling and deployment) and beyond, as budgets may be constrained

by pandemic-related priority shifts.

Another major constraint identified outside of IRS Procurement was the IRS ELC process. The IRS

requires information systems-related business changes to be approved through the ELC process.

ELC outlines project paths and numerous required artifacts.

However, the IRS found that there waslittle, if any, ability to tailorthe ELC processto fit the scope

of the project at hand and the need for rapid prototyping and development. Pilot IRS DATA Act

will likely run into delays, which could potentially be significant asthe team navigatesthe process

and seeks ELC approvals. Currently, there is not a streamlined approach to ELC for RPA projects,

though ELC and the Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO) hopes to develop one in the

near future.

Transformation Enablers

The Deputy Chief Procurement Officer was a staunch supporter of innovative technologies and

the main champion of Pilot IRS DATA Act. The willingness to take risks, while doing so

incrementally and continually evaluating return on investment (ROI), is critical to this project’s

success. Pilot IRS DATA Act was solicited substantively different from how the government

normally buys technology, resulting in non-traditional contractors that had not previously done

business with the federal government submitting responses. Pilot IRS aggressively streamlined a

cost-effective approach to testing and deploying technology solutions that had an immediate

impact on its mission and how the IRS supports the American taxpayer.

Stakeholders

Pilot IRS DATA Act impacts a wide array of stakeholders:

 IRS OCPO—Executives, Procurement Innovation Branch, all Contracting Officers and

Contract Specialists, contract writing system team (Procurement for the Public Sector and

Folders Management)

 IRS OCFO—Financial personnel collaborating with OCPO for DATA Act submissions

 IRS OCIO—Information technology personnel providing IRS laptops and necessary

licenses to contractor personnel, as well as involved in the ELC process

 IRS ELC—includes multiple IRS business units such as Privacy, Government Liaison, and

Disclosure and Security Risk Management Office

Technology Selection

Pilot IRS DATA Act was solicited as Solution Challenge One under the Pilot IRS framework. The

intent of the Pilot IRS DATA Act solicitation was to acquire innovative tools to meet the three

goals previously mentioned and the IRS was open to any viable solution to achieve the goals. The

solicitation was well received by industry, resulting in 38 proposals. Comparative evaluations in

accordance with FAR 13.106-2(b)(3) were used to determine the best value based on: Technical

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How Emerging Technology is Transforming Federal Procurement

(capability of the solution to meet the primary goals), Past Performance, and Price. The

requirement was solicited as an agile modular approach that would allow flexibility to pivot as

needed and this has contributed to the program’s success as additional within scope items have

been identified throughout the phases.

Based on the written proposals, ten contractors were selected to participate in technical

demonstrations of their solution, to include discussion on Phases 2-4, ROI, and funding levels.

Five contractors were ultimately selected to receive contracts and funding for Phase 1 (Proof of

Concept). The technical solution of each selected contractor was slightly different, allowing the

IRS to make funding decisions in future phases based on the contractor(s) whose solution proved

to be the most promising. Two of the five selected contractors received funding to continue into

Phase 2, and both remaining contractors continue to support thisrequirement and improve their

solutions in Phase 4.

These contractors developed and began to deploy solutions using RPA, natural language

processing (NLP), and AI. The contractors' solutions review data in FPDS-NG and on contract

documents, compare data elements between the two data sets, and correct FPDS-NG as

requested. Recent modifications to the DATA ACT contracts, which began in Phase 4, have

contractors expanding their solutions to interact with the contract writing system.

Accomplishments to Date

Through the recently completed Phase 3, IRS Procurement realized significant Return on

Investment (ROI). ROI, by contractor, was 78 percent and 116 percent over break-even,

comparing the amount of labor hours and costs associated with manually performing these

actions. Assuming the contractors were tasked with correcting a year's worth of DATA Act errors,

the contractors' solutions could replace the work of nearly two full-time equivalents per year.

Specifically related to the DATA Act, IRS Procurement used one contractor’s solution to correct

data elements in real-time, which is especially critical as DATA Act certifications moved from

quarterly to monthly. The Pilot IRS DATA Act team loaded the contractor’s spreadsheet

“corrections file” with 20 FPDS-NG dates signed that required correction. These errors were

identified by the OCFO in preparing for the monthly DATA Act certification. The team is about to

correct an additional 178 FPDS-NG dates signed, representing nearly two percent of annual

volume in this high error rate data element. For this batch of corrections, the team used the

solution of the second contractor: the contractor’s AI solution extracted dates signed from

contract award documents, compared the data with that in FPDS-NG, and identified

discrepancies.

IRS Procurement was also able to quickly deploy one contractor’s solution to review and correct

COVID-19-related FPDS-NG data. The contractor’s RPA bot scans FPDS-NG weekly for

Department of the Treasury (USDT) contract actions related to COVID-19 and corrects the

requested FPDS-NG data elements in less than one-quarter of a second per element. As of June

22, 2020, IRS Procurement corrected 76 COVID-19-related data elements with this solution.

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How Emerging Technology is Transforming Federal Procurement

Artificial Intelligence for Past Performance Prototypes and Piloting Initiative,

Department of Homeland Security, Procurement Innovation Lab

Led by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), OCPO, Procurement Innovation Lab (PIL),

this project, focused on the Contractor Performance Assessment Reporting System (CPARS).

CPARS is an evidence-based acquisition modernization project under the OFPP Acquisition

Modernization Plan and is part of the “Frictionless Acquisition” CAP Goal of the President’s

Management Agenda.

The CPARS AI effort focuses on improving the ability of the acquisition workforce at DHS to rapidly

access relevant records from CPARS. The CPARS system serves as the central repository of

contractor past performance assessment records. Contracting officers are required to consider

contractor past performance when conducting source selection as part of the federal contracting

process, and CPARS is the place they can access information to do so.

For several years, in reverse industry days (RIDs) and acquisition innovation roundtables (AIRs),

as well as more informal meetings, industry raised concerns related to CPARS including issues

related to data quality and stating that contracting officers were not using the system for

acquisitions. The federal acquisition community, those on the front lines of contracting, shared

similar concerns. CPARS has a wealth of data, with over 1 million records for over sixty-thousand

vendors, but it is hard to rapidly access assessment reports that are relevant to a given source

selection.

The difficulty leads to some less than ideal outcomes, primarily workarounds (like past

performance questionnaires that operate outside of the CPARS system), but also a reduction in

the quality of data in the system. This is part of a Catch-22 – the perceived value of the CPARS

system is reduced when it is difficult for acquisition professionals to get data out of it, leading to

diminished perceived value of their time spent inputting quality data into the system. Three out

of four acquisition professionals identified the past performance evaluation process as an

opportunity for intelligent automation to support the workforce. The challenge was then raised

to industry: can emerging technology such as ML and AI help federal contracting professionals

rapidly access relevant records from CPARS for a given source selection (set of vendors against a

specific requirement, or solicitation) and provide them insight into the data that can aid them as

they review and evaluate a vendors’ past performance?

Description of the System or Portfolio

The type of solution solicited fell into the class of decision support systems, where ML solutions

(falling under the general term of AI) are used to support the knowledge discovery process of a

human. Such decision support systems are common within the business intelligence (BI)

community where metrics and performance measures are summarized through interactive

dashboards. Other terminology common to this domain is visual analytics, where researchers

explore design principles and practices for creating novel tools and techniques to support

analysis.

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How Emerging Technology is Transforming Federal Procurement

For the problem of using CPARS data during past performance analysis, this can be thought of as

a classic information retrieval problem, which can be augmented through interactive

visualizations. Given a series of records for a particular Dun and Bradstreet (DUNS) number, one

can envision a tool that can graph average past performance histories related to the DUNS

number, show outliers from the average, and support interactive filtering and drill-down into

records. Underlying the summary and filtering can be machine learning techniques that can

process text to help identify records that fall into the same business domain as the Statement of

Work (SOW) being solicited. Text analysis (again falling under the umbrella of AI) can also be

applied to the contracting officer notes to highlight sentiment within a textual description that

may indicate mismatches to quality score rankings (for example, providing a score of

“satisfactory” in a given performance metric, but having text descriptions that indicate

unsatisfactory work).

While many deep learning solutions (another class of AI) rely on millions of records for training,

this class of problem can leverage novel text analysis solutions (such as Bidirectional Encoder

Representations or BERT), to support the information retrieval process. In thissolution space, the

goal is to order records based on relevancy, as well as highlight potential problematic records

based on quality metrics and text descriptions related to past performance. By developing

advanced search functions, aggregations and filters, the manual search process can be

considerably improved, leading to efficiencies in procurement.

Such tools do not replace the human decision-making process. Instead, AI is used to augment the

normal workflow done by the Contracting Officer. Historically, aggregation of scores, trend

analysis, and text summary analysis were manual processes. By providing tools that can

automatically aggregate scores, visuals that enable trend analysis, and highlights of potentially

relevant text, decision support tools can reduce the cognitive burden on Contracting Officers and

make them more efficient. As such, Contracting Officers will not rely on mechanistic

comparisons, but they will utilize the decision support system to make their own informed

decisions.

Future State

Ultimately, the prototyping and piloting initiative for CPARS AI solutions intends to have multiple

FedRAMP accredited cloud-based commercial Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions for federal

agencies to procure and utilize to improve the work life of our federal acquisition workforce and

to support more meaningful outcomes of source selection past performance evaluation.

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How Emerging Technology is Transforming Federal Procurement

Figure 2: CPARS AI Initiative Project Timelines

Constraints

From the outset, DHS realized it did not want to develop its own IT systems/solutions. CPARS

would remain the system of record for contractor past performance assessments, given the

significant resources committed to the system and its modernization. Further, the intent was not

to replace CPARS. Rather, DHS wanted to support the development of third-party solutions that

connect to CPARS so that DHS can gain additional value from the data contained in the CPARS

system.

DHS maintains rights to the data in the system but did not want to own the AI solutions that

ingest the data and derive outputs from the data. DHS wanted to contract for the output from

these AI solutions – in the form of CPARS AI Reports or Subscription Services with dashboards or

similar visualization interfaces. If successful, the end state of this AI effort for CPARS for DHS will

be a self-sustaining, multi-contractor commercial marketplace.

Currently, this marketplace does not exist. DHS views the government’s role to be an incubator

fueling the development of this new commercial marketplace, and DHS has an active stake in the

success of these solutions. DHS also does not intend to contract for one solution. Multiple

vendors in a production phase helps DHS keep costs down and improve quality through

competition and diversity in solution offerings, which ensures DHS is not faced with vendor lockin and helps incentivize industry be attentive to model degradation and consistently correct

model drift.

DHS is leading and building these solutions for the entire federal acquisition community. It took

both the government and industry partners extended time to understand this, but these

solutions will be available to every federal agency once they are production ready – likely through

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How Emerging Technology is Transforming Federal Procurement

Government-Wide Acquisition Contracts(GWACs). Finally, yet most importantly, DHS issteadfast

in their commitment to develop user-driven solutions. Through a user-centered design approach,

the DHS initiative will ensure their operational contracting community to be intimately involved

in the development and design of these solutions.

Transformation Enablers

DHS followed several goals in the development of the project:

1. Start with the end in mind – knowing the desired end state, recognizing constraints, and

building backwards from this starting point enabled DHS to understand what was ahead

and allowed them to scope, resource, and build the right coalition of stakeholders to

support that journey.

2. Make time for the data – recognizing and planning for the time needed to prepare the

data that digital transformation technology solutions such as these need for training and

testing helped DHS ensure that vendors had what they needed. This required support

from subject matter experts was critical to have those stakeholders on board from the

start. It also required strong collaboration with industry who needed that data to be

successful.

3. DHS supported the development of commercial solutions that did not currently exist,

rather than asking industry to build solutions for DHS that the government would own

and maintain.. First, it helped DHS identify the appropriate procurement authority – the

Commercial Solutions Opening Pilot Program (CSOP) authority provided to DHS under the

FY19 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). 20 It also helped DHS adopt the principle

of minimal restriction on the commercial marketplace – DHS structured intellectual

property rights to protect its rights to the CPARS data, not to own the rights to the

commercial solutionsthe contractors were developing to meet DHS needs. This approach

enabled the contractors to secure additional, private funding to support their ability to

design and develop these commercial CPARS AI solutions, which the government would

buy later – in the form of subscriptions or reports.

4. Building incrementally has been critical to ensuring the users and policy stakeholders

understand the purpose and value of the CPARS AI solutions, as well as how the AI

interacts with the CPARS data and supports user decision-making. Building incrementally

has also ensured the government and industry are investing time in solutions that are

meeting the government’s objectives and helps ensure that each contractor has

appropriate access to users, decision-makers, and feedback throughout the development

of these commercial solutions. This model supports private sector investment in these

solutions. This model also supports appropriate, necessary federal data governance and

policy changes.

Stakeholders

1. Industry – Contractors that do business with the federal government and have data in

CPARS.

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How Emerging Technology is Transforming Federal Procurement

2. Industry – The contractors that are developing the commercial CPARS AI solutions.

3. OMB and OFPP.

4. Chief Acquisition Officer’s Council (Agency Senior Procurement Executives serving as

executive sponsors).

5. Procurement Council on E-Government.

6. The GSA’s Integrated Award Environment (IAE).

7. Federal CPARS Users (Operational and Policy).

8. Federal Information Technology Subject Matter Experts (DHS OCIO partnership support

through SME technical assistance for data preparation, technology assessment, and

security accreditation).

9. Third-Party Partners (Technology Assessment & Validation).

10. Federal Innovation Stakeholders (including executive sponsors, champions).

11. Federal Information Technology Stakeholders (including executive sponsors, champions).

12. DHS Center of Academic Excellence – Center for Accelerating Operational Efficiencies

(CAOE), Arizona State University (providing technology assessment and SME support).

Business Process Model

In order for industry to address the challenge question, on behalf of the federal acquisition

community, DHS issued a general solicitation using the CSOP authority derived from the Fiscal

Year 2017 NDAA. They used that authority to obtain demonstrations of a proof of concept to

determine the extent to which AI can assist Contracting Officers conducting past performance

evaluations in making efficient and effective use of CPARS information. The government hoped,

as a threshold, that the demonstrations would show that AI can help the Contracting Officer

identify which records in CPARS contain the most relevant information to the source selection in

question. The government also desired data-driven and evidence-based recommendations about

opportunities to improve the data quality of the past performance information inputted by

Contracting Officers into the CPARS, based on the provided test data set and informed by the

development of the prototype.

The solicitation was posted in August 2019 and 40 proposals were received. Peer review

identified nine that demonstrated technical merit and awards were negotiated with those nine

contractors. The following constraints were incorporated into the initial CPARS AI prototype

awards:

 The government does not require delivery of any intellectual property.

 The government will provide test data for use in the prototype design and

development. This test data will be sanitized to safeguard the integrity of the CPARS

system. The test data will be provided as a data table developed using a parsing script

from PDF CPARS reports generated from the CPARS system. The data table will be

comprised of approximately 1,000 records representing approximately eight

contractors. Additionally, a sample solicitation will be provided as part of the test data

for purposes of developing the proof of concept or viable prototype.

 To the extent that FAR 42.1503 or any other FAR provision limits use of information

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How Emerging Technology is Transforming Federal Procurement

from CPARS to supporting specific source selection decisions, from a policy perspective,

OFPP does not view this AI initiative as an inappropriate or misuse of the data, as the

purpose of the proof of concept is to explore how to maximize the value of the CPARS

data specifically for purposes of source selection. Further, DHS will take appropriate

safeguards to protect the data and intends to limit the use of the data to only the

number of reports sufficient to enable DHS to obtain meaningful proof of concepts or

viable prototypes.

 The government will provide regular, scheduled access to SMEs during the

performance of resultant contracts, including operational contract specialists who

use CPARS to perform past performance evaluations, for purposes of user feedback

during the development of the proof of concept / working prototype.

 The government may engage academic researchersthrough a DHS Academic Center

of Excellence partnership agreement for purposes of supporting the government’s

assessment of the validity and reliability of the proof-of-concept prototypes.

 The government prefers solutions that will ultimately be able to comply with Federal

Information Security Management Act (FISMA) of 2002 and 2014 (as amended) and

IAE design standards which may mean a solution capable of obtaining a Federal Risk

and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) certification or ATO. Phase 2

contracts will require the final delivered CPARS AI solution to obtain the FedRAMP

certification and DHS ATO. CPARS AI solutions unable to achieve those accreditations

will not be eligible for piloting contracts (Phase 2).

 The government requires that the solution be “explainable” – meaning that the

solution shall describe the methodology that was applied to the data to obtain the

results and outcomes from the use of the AI methodology

Government stakeholders attended each of the demonstrations, including the final viable

prototype demonstration, and these stakeholders included users, as well as decision-makers.

Commercial companies were awarded $50,000 in seed funding, provided test data, and

consistent access to a product owner and users to iteratively develop the prototypes with

scheduled demonstrations along the four-month period. In January 2020, the initial

prototypes were delivered. Most of the vendors’ prototypes effectively demonstrated the

capabilities of these cognitive solutions to the use case and warranted further prototyping.

DHS continues the building out the next phase of prototyping by validating user stories,

developing the baseline security control requirements for the cloud-based SaaS solutions,

coordinating the cross-agency data preparation of a larger test data set, and lining up additional

agencies to support this journey, including expanding the user group that engages with the

vendors throughout the prototyping process. Ultimately, if the prototyping and piloting phases

prove as intended, DHS will have multiple FedRAMP accredited cloud-based commercial SaaS

solutions for federal agencies to procure and utilize to improve the work life of our federal

acquisition workforce, and to support more meaningful outcomes of source selection past

performance evaluation.

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How Emerging Technology is Transforming Federal Procurement

Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the BUYSMARTER Initiative

The intent of BUYSMARTER is to maximize HHS’ enterprise purchasing power to establish a

cohesive acquisition structure across the department in order to drive better pricing and achieve

better terms and conditions, while consolidating the total number of contracts. This technical

solution leverages AI technology to assist in spend data and identifying opportunities that

support enterprise acquisitions. A solution includes the Full Contract Scan (FCS) AI Tool. The

purpose of BUYSMARTER is to enable the 26 operating and staff divisions within HHS to operate

as a singular buying entity by bringing all HHS contracting data together and then deploy AI to

empower the HHS acquisition community with powerful analytical, collaboration, and

negotiation capabilities.

Current State

HHS has five acquisition management systems across HHS’s 11 operating divisions and 15 staff

divisions (OpDivs/StaffDivs). If HHS wanted to buy as an enterprise, it would have to search

through and read thousands of contracts across the OpDivs/StaffDivs to determine who buys the

same things, at what prices, and with what terms and conditions. HHS did not have the ability to

“scan” full contracts and compare “like to like” requirements and items to increase bargaining

power. This is where AI was the logical solution to solve this age-old problem.

Figure 3: BUYSMARTER Before and After State

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How Emerging Technology is Transforming Federal Procurement

Future State

With the FCS AI tool, HHS can quickly scan existing contracts, negotiate collectively, and write

future contracts with agency wide goals. The BUYSMARTER AI FCS Microservice’s purpose is to

enable the 26 OpDivs and StaffDivs within HHS to operate as a singular buying entity by leveraging

the full suite of HHS contracting data and AI capabilities to empower the HHS acquisition

community with powerful analytical, collaboration, and negotiation capabilities.

In short, the BUYSMARTER philosophy is, fundamentally, a human experience where a group of

individuals from different agencies acquiring together as one, as

“...this tool is designed to AI-enable that human experience. BUYSMARTER is a human

experience of working together to achieve cost savings and improvements to mission

capabilities.” 21

The key word is ‘Together’, as shown in the following graphic.

Figure 4: BUYSMARTER Business Philosophy

BUYSMARTER’s approach empowers collaborative requirements gathering and all historical data

that leverages AI technology to assist in understanding spend data and identifying opportunities

that harness collective purchasing power while consolidating contract vehicles. The goal of the

FCS AI tool is to give the Category Collaborative teams an entirely new capability to understand

where the most spend is happening, where operating and divisions are contracting for the same

things, and where the differences in prices paid are the most pronounced. Building the tool to

meet the defined mission, the BUYSMARTER team had to leverage many types of AI tools, such

as NLP, ML, Nearest Neighbor Inference Models, Predictive Search Engines, and dozens of AI

open source code tools.

Having the ability to review the entire department’s

spend within a category, its sub-categories and down

to the specific products/services will allow the

agencies to make sound, logical decisions as to

whether to pursue an enterprise acquisition for that

product/service. The tool was designed to be very

simple to use based on familiar tools that we use

regularly: Figure 5: BUYSMARTER UI/UX

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How Emerging Technology is Transforming Federal Procurement

 The search function looks like a regular Google Search

 The process follows a simple TurboTax style step-by-step process

 And the output looks and works just like Excel

The AI is designed to ‘look’ for information the same way you and I would – by making

associations within and between the things we are searching for that make sense in what is

known as an ‘inferential model’. Given the learning nature of AI, the tool will get better and

smarter every time it is used. The tool currently processes 1.37 million contract attachments in

under eight seconds. The navigation tool seen below allows the user to start a new search or to

jump back into any of their historical searches.

Figure 6: BUYSMARTER UI Example 1

The FCS process flow, highlighted in the following graphic, walks users through each step to

‘narrow the search funnel’ to direct the AI engine on where to look and what it should find.

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How Emerging Technology is Transforming Federal Procurement

Figure 7: BUYSMARTER UI Example 2

The search screens have been designed with a simple look and feel where the user is led through

each step with plain English questions and examples. As the user moves through each step of the

sequence, the tool begins to pre-populate what fits within that search parameter. The more

search parametersthe user inputsinto each step will help the AI tool to ‘hone-in’ on exactly what

is being sought. The Output tool, shown in this Figure 8, displays all the key variables that the

teams will need to master throughout the acquisition process.

Figure 8: BUYSMARTER UI Example 3

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How Emerging Technology is Transforming Federal Procurement

The number and type of variables is based on the category and type of product, equipment, or

service being targeted. The actual contract language can be viewed, as well. Users can Sort, Hide,

and Filter any column just like in Excel to target the data of interest. Each time the ‘ThumbsUp/Thumb’s-Down’ flagging is complete, the AI tool re-runs and updates the results as it further

‘learns’.

Figure 9: BUYSMARTER UI Example 4

Finally, the AI tool calculates the metrics that would be key for making enterprise buying

decisions as shown below:

Figure 10: BUYSMARTER UI Example 5

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How Emerging Technology is Transforming Federal Procurement

Constraints

This AI based solution was designed and built from the ground-up by piecing together multiple

AI toolsthat all had to work together to produce the desired results. HHS leaders had to be willing

to the ‘develop fast, fail fast, and learn’ model with daily interactions with the AI vendorsto mold

the tool into what HHS needed. By being the ‘first in kind’ AI tool, HHS had no rulebook or recipe

to follow, so the development of the tool took longer than desired. Also, developing a simplified

and automated process for ingesting the data from the five contract writing systems would

greatly improve the challenges of data loading and structuring.

Transformation Enablers

The most key enabler has been unwavering leadership support, including the visionary leadership

of the Office of Acquisition, the Heads of Contracting Activity from the OpDivs/StaffDivs, and the

Re-Imagine HHS Transformation Management Office. Going forward, BUYSMARTER must really

focus on the value delivered, in terms of “cost savings” in addition to clearly articulating the

“why” behind continued investment will prove to be critical.

Stakeholders

Stakeholders vary significantly across the HHS Operating Divisions and Agencies. However,

primary stakeholders include the Heads of Contracting Activity, acquisition workforce, and

acquisition systems developers and maintainers (to include the maintainers of legacy systems).

Also, the cost avoidances that these large enterprise acquisitions will realize will help the OpDivs

and StaffDivs better deliver their mission by keeping more of their funds focused on mission

delivery.

Business Process Model

The entire enterprise acquisition process follows the HHS BUYSMARTER Operating Model, which

mirrorsthe Healthcare Industry’s Group Purchasing Organization model forleveraging the buying

power of member groups of hospitals and non-acute care sites.

Organizational Readiness

HHS Deputy Secretary Eric Hargan signed the BUYSMARTER Program Proclamation on January

14, 2020, formally establishing BUYSMARTER as an official program with the Office of

Acquisitions.

Technology Selection

Full suite of 40+ AI Open Source Code Tools brought together to achieve the mission.

Lessons Learned

AI, by its very nature, is a new and customized capability when applied to any new use case. The

best lesson was constant developer/customer interactions. Developing in a model that is ‘more

agile than Agile’, in that, the full team meets every day to review progress on development, data,

and testing. It has become affectionately known as ‘Full Contact Development’ and is the key to

our success.

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How Emerging Technology is Transforming Federal Procurement

Conclusion

People produce permanent processes

No matter what modernization effort is being undertaken, the adoption of emerging

technologiesis often a difficult task beyond the technical aspects of the initiative. Technical issues

aside, buy-in is critical for emerging technologies to be successful as the workforce needs to be

able to lead this change and leverage the capabilities of these technologies to transform

government.

For example, the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) was able to successfully leverage the use of RPA

by overcoming workforce reluctance about how these technologies affected their positions. The

DLA RPA team undertook a comprehensive strategy to communicate with workers that not only

were there not going to be reductions in jobs, but they were also going to be able to do more

interesting work — and that the bots would be able to be a force multiplier against empty

positionsthat were never going to be filled due to budgetary reasons. These efforts would enable

the department to get more strategic work done, the epitome of the “Shifting from Low-Value

to High-Value Work” CAP goal. 22

However, with the possibilities that these emerging technologies bring especially the promise of

AI, the federal workforce is not ready to execute these solutions. According to a 2019

Accenture survey: 23

61 percent of federal workers said they haven’t been adequately trained to work

alongside AI technologies. According to the new research, while 85% of federal executives

believe that ‘collaboration between humans and machines will be critical to innovation in

the future,’ only 18% said they were currently preparing their workforce to interact with

collaborative, interactive and explainable AI-based systems.

Reskilling the workforce to implement emerging technology solutions is required. Achieving this

training goal begins with federal leaders engaging their workforces early to provide a vision on

the outcomes to be achieved by the technology and the requirements of the workforce to

successfully achieve these objectives. Ultimately, federal leaders need to remove barriers to

make it easier for the workforce to obtain the skills they need to be successful. Several areas

include:

 Designing a more user-friendly learning environment to increase convenience and

opportunities for the federal workforce that accelerates training. This area focuses on

time and easing the overburdened workforce to prioritize training and incentives lifelearning beyond the heavy compliance of daily operations.

 Creating organizational cultures that make employee engagement and knowledge

transfer easier, empower communications, and improve collaboration to create positive

changes that people both feel and grow.

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How Emerging Technology is Transforming Federal Procurement

 Reevaluating the way training programs are developed and delivered, as well as

understanding how agencies need to train adult learners to grasp new topics and skills.

For example, Beth Killoran, GSA’s Deputy Chief Information Officer, is considering how

short, YouTube-style videos and podcasts could be used as training tools for employees

to learn at their own pace in digestible chunks. 24 In addition, agencies can leverage online

educational platforms like LinkedIn Learning. 25

Through a concerted effort by federal leaders to focus on the workforce versus the technology,

the implementation of these capabilities will be successful across the federal government.

A starting point for today’s practitioners

One of the advantages of these technologies is the relative ease of getting started with their use.

Today’s practitioners have numerous opportunities to begin understanding these tools through

product demonstrations, either through verifying general capabilities, or better yet, precoordinated demonstration that allows a specific issue to be addressed through a more targeted

demonstration. Nonetheless, the goal of using these technologies should be to integrate

emerging technologies into a larger digital transformation and modernization strategy rather

than approaching these projects piecemeal. While using them this way may be an effective

strategy in the short term, these technologies are not suitable in all situations.

One of the most important planning steps needed before undertaking any emerging technology

initiative is to understand the outcomes of using the technology and the problem needing to be

solved. The technology is not a be-all-end-all and this planning and understanding helps

organizations ensure they are using these tools effectively and not misapplying it to processes

when another solution would be a better fit. Considerations for practitioners to get started with

emerging technologies: 26

 One of the most important starting points for emerging technology initiatives is to avoid

focusing on large scale projects. By looking for “quick wins” through smaller projects and

lower risk opportunities, measurable return on investment is possible to allow for

momentum to grow towards larger implementations.

 Fit the problem to the solution to increase opportunities for successful projects. For

example, processes that would be suitable for RPA implementations are rules-based and

repetitious. Work with stakeholders on process automation workshops to assess

processes and choose your starting point.

 Develop business cases to prioritize which processes to automate and analyze the best

opportunities for value and return on investment. Focus on the value of increasing

efficiency and accuracy of the tasks looking to be automated, and cost savings as a result

 Determine the right operating model for hosting the technology, since the technologies

can be executed in the same ways as any other software. This analysis would be look at

models such as internally hosted data centers, or via cloud, for example.

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How Emerging Technology is Transforming Federal Procurement

 Having the right partners, or mentors, can be the difference between success and failure.

As stated by Prem Jadhwani, Chief Technology Officer, of Government Acquisitions, Inc.:

27

“Mentors should be more than a sounding board or advisor – they can also be

valuable partners, guiding and helping you throughout the AI solution lifecycle –

from inception to mission outcome. Think of that when choosing an integrator or

solutions provider; getting into AI is not like buying a computer, but more like

adopting a new way of doing business. You’ll get further faster if your partner has

done that before. “

Next steps for a team new to these technologies

An important factor for federal agencies is to focus on understanding how these technology

solutions impact the priorities of the agency. Agencies should research how others in the public

sector have implemented these solutions under consideration, since these initiatives have broad

exposure across the federal government. Research should also be conducted with vendors and

other industry experts to see what capabilities exist that can be implemented. It can be tempting

to jump in headfirst when a solution promises to push the agency toward meeting a certain goal.

Adoption of new technology should be well-conceived and methodical for it to be successful.

In addition to a well-thought-out implementation process, make sure the team is supported and

setup for success. This includes training so that the workforce can get the most value out of new

technologies and can best leverage the capability. Training should be both ongoing and

integrated into operations.

Thistraining focusshould be two-phased. Phase one would constitute more traditional platforms

and mediums such as expert consultants, the technology vendor, etc. Phase two then pivots to

focus on training-the-trainer and identifying employees who are comfortable using the new

solution and encourage them to both train other employees and be coaches to others when

questions arise.28 Ultimately, practitioners will just have to dig in and try new things. Agencies

can and should experiment with single-point solutions and not get locked into a technology that

cannot be easily discontinued if it is not working or solving a problem. Getting real people using

it as soon as possible is the best way to realize the potential of an emerging technology.

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How Emerging Technology is Transforming Federal Procurement

Authors

This paper was written by a consortium of government and industry representatives. The

organizational affiliations of these contributors are included for information purposes only. The

views expressed in this document do not necessarily represent the official views of the individuals

and organizations that participated in its development.

Jaime Gracia United States Government (Project Lead)

Mike Rice CornerStone IT (Project Lead)

Polly Hall United States Government

Janelle Billingslea United States Government

Marisa Roinestad United States Government

David Dastvar Eagle Tech, Inc.

David Hernandez Riva Solutions, Inc.

Ken Thomson Unissant, Inc.

Ali Loveys BT Block Health Group

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How Emerging Technology is Transforming Federal Procurement

References

1 Federal Acquisition Regulation, 1.102(a), https://www.acquisition.gov/far/part-1#FAR_1_102

2 Federal Acquisition Regulation, 1.102-4(e), https://www.acquisition.gov/far/1.102-4

3 Office of Federal Procurement Policy website: https://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/management/officefederal-procurement-policy/

4 Mitchell, Billy. (MAR 29, 2019). Acquisition is ‘ripe for emerging technology,’ says OFPP’s Newhart’.

fedscoop. https://www.fedscoop.com/emerging-technology-ofpp-joanie-newhart/

5 President’s Management Agenda, https://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/management/pma/

6 Cross Agency Priorities, https://www.performance.gov/CAP/overview/

7 Ibid

8 CAP Goal Shifting From Low-Value to High-Value Work , https://www.performance.gov/CAP/low-valueto-high-value-work/

9 CAP Goal Frictionless Acquisition, https://www.performance.gov/CAP/frictionless-acquisition/

10 Ibid

11 Gansler, Jacques S., Greenwalt, William C. and Lucyshyn, William. (November, 2013) Non-Traditional

Commercial Defense Contractors. University of Maryland, School of Public Policy, Center for Public Policy

and Private Enterprise. https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a613239.pdf

12 Kumar, Vivek (Jun 25, 2018). The Need for Data Infrastructure for Best Utilization of Artificial

Intelligence. towards data science. https://towardsdatascience.com/the-need-for-data-infrastructurefor-best-utilization-of-artificial-intelligence-72612c1026e0

13 Ibid

14 DATA Act Information Model Schema (DAIMS) https://fiscal.treasury.gov/data-transparency/DAIMScurrent.html

15 Fiscal Year 2019 Digital Accountability and Transparency Act Reporting Compliance, November 7,

2019, Reference Number: 2020-10-003.

https://www.treasury.gov/tigta/auditreports/2020reports/202010003fr.pdf

16 About Pilot IRS: https://www.irs.gov/about-irs/procurement/about-pilot-irs

17 Boyd, Aaron (August 5, 2019). IRS Doesn’t Have An R&D Shop, So It Built A $7M Procurement Vehicle

Instead. Nextgov. https://www.nextgov.com/emerging-tech/2019/08/irs-doesnt-have-rd-shop-so-itbuilt-7m-procurement-vehicle-instead/158952/

18 Office of Federal Procurement Policy (JUN 14, 2012). Contracting Guidance to Support Modular

Development.

https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/default/files/omb/procurement/guidance/modularapproaches-for-information-technology.pdf

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How Emerging Technology is Transforming Federal Procurement

19 Periodic Table of Acquisition Innovations, Federal Acquisition Institute. https://www.fai.gov/periodictable/pdfs/Pilot_IRS.pdf

20 Department of Homeland Security, Commercial Solutions Opening Pilot Program Guide, Office of The

Chief Procurement Officer (JUL 17, 2019).

https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/commercial_solutions_opening_pilot_program_gu

ide.pdf

21 HHS BUYSMARTER website: https://www.hhs.gov/grants/contracts/buysmarter/journey-toprogram/index.html

22 Ibid

23 Accenture Federal Services (February 15, 2019). Federal workers ready to thrive in the age of AI.

https://www.accenture.com/us-en/insights/us-federal-government/ready-thrive-ai?src=SOMS

24 Blake, Johnson Nicole (January 30, 2020). Are Government Employees Ready for Ai? Govloop.

https://www.govloop.com/are-government-employees-ready-for-ai/

25 LinkedIn Learning - Overview. https://www.linkedin.com/help/learning/answer/71918/linkedinlearning-overview?lang=en

26 Greer, Kevin. (August 8, 2018). Getting started with robotic process automation in government is easier

than you think. CGI Blog. https://www.cgi.com/us/en-us/blog/getting-started-with-robotic-processautomation-in-government-is-easier-than-you-think

27 Jadhwani, Prem. 7 Steps for Getting Started in AI. Government Executive Leadership Voices.

https://www.govexec.com/media/sponsored/leadershipvoices/seven-steps-for-getting-started-inai/index.html#article

28 Power, Rhett. (Jul 14, 2019). 3 Best Practices for Incorporating Emerging Tech. Forbes.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/rhettpower/2019/07/14/3-best-practices-for-incorporating-emergingtech/?sh=1d8f83287256

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