The U.S. Army is working to apply agile principles not only to software development but also to its software acquisition process, citing the need for a contract vehicle that could enable it to procure software offerings from industry, Federal News Network reported Wednesday.
Doug Bush, assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology, highlighted the need for a contract vehicle that could help the service branch speed up the award process.
“The first goal is speed. Having a vehicle established will allow us to go faster on task orders than doing a de-novo contract in every case, which I think is better for industry,” Bush said.
“What we’ve seen without this approach is that all of our program executive offices have to do their own separate competitions for different software development, each a little bit different way, and it’s just — we hope — more efficient to have a vehicle they can use to go faster,” he added.
According to FNN, the Army is developing a request for proposals for a potential 10-year, $1 billion indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract for software procurement with contract types determined at the task order level.
“Every contract needs to be tailored to the task, and it’s not a simple world of cost-plus versus fixed-price,” Bush noted.