Army acquisition officials held a media roundtable on Thursday at the Pentagon to address industry concerns with a request for information on a multivendor contract for software procurement, particularly regarding the use of cost-plus contracts, Breaking Defense reported Friday.
In May, the Army started soliciting input on the New Modern Software Development multiple-award, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract.
Doug Bush, assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology, noted that the military branch intended to use a hybrid approach and would not solely use cost-plus contracts for acquiring software.
“It’s not a simple world of cost-plus versus fixed price there. Those are ends of a spectrum. In between those things lie a vast array of hybrid approaches that are tailored to different things. So this is a very complicated thing that cannot be simplified into a binary cost or fixed price narrative,” Bush, a previous Wash100 awardee, told reporters during the event.
Jennifer Swanson, chief systems engineer for the Army’s acquisition office, said the service is experimenting with a pilot program that will issue a solicitation without disclosing the type of contract upfront.
“I’m not saying we’re definitely doing it, but we’re working through the legalities and the possibility of using this modern software development contract as the pilot to look at what we would do if we didn’t specify contract type up front in a task order requirement,” Swanson told reporters.