Agencies to Industry: Let’s Chat

The government has a decades-old bad rap in technology acquisition and modernizing its old systems, but one of the government’s top acquisition officials believes the key to truly bringing innovation to the government’s archaic systems comes down to one core competency: communication.

“If you are not having the right dialogue with industry, you are not going to bring in any significant innovation whatsoever,” said Bobby McCane, chief procurement officer for mission support at the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

McCane, speaking Wednesday at the Acquire Conference & Expo, promoted the “Acquisition of the Future” initiative, which is essentially an early movement among government and industry collaborators seeking to mold the long-term future of federal procurement.

The most important pillar boils down to communication; specifically, communication among the government’s procurement personnel and industry’s best and brightest individuals over the art of what is actually possible with today’s technologies. Whether in the form of formal requests for information or informal meetings, McCane said the short story is that government needs to talk to industry more.

“You have to have conversations with thought leaders to understand what the capabilities really are in the marketplace,” McCane said. “That is one way to get efficiency.”

McCane also said the government generally needs to get out of the business of owning systems when at all possible. “Pay by the drink” utility purchasing, the standard way to buy cloud computing services, should be pursued when possible, McCane said -- and it ought to be a decision made early on in the IT acquisition process.

“The first question you should ask is, 'Do I need to own this?'” McCane said.