Improving government contracting and acquisition

A large part of successfully modernizing government tech involves making it easier to do the work. This usually means writing better contracts and streamlining acquisition. 18F was really good at this. We supported our agency partners to do it better in our projects.

Better contracting meant helping to craft legal agreements that follow federal requirements and also get at the outcomes teams wanted. Better acquisition is about making sure that you have the services or software to actually do the work. (For example, it’s not good to create PDFs if your staff doesn’t have Adobe software on their computers to access them.)

Doing government contracting and acquisition better is not (just) about finding the cheapest way to do things. It’s about working more effectively and getting the best value. It’s about working collaboratively with teams to find out what they really need, so that no money is wasted on things they don’t.

Examples of 18F’s approach

Over the 11 years of our work, we helped to pilot and develop ways to build better government tech before we were eliminated on March 1. We hired experts and had them work with people to improve the process.

Modular contracting

We worked alongside our agency partners to design contracts that used iterative development best practices and avoided overly complex agreements and waterfall-style requirements, so that the agencies could retain flexibility and judgment of situations as they worked toward the team’s desired outcomes. For example, we were champions of modular contracting, the practice of breaking up large procurements for monolith systems into a constellation of smaller, interoperable contracts. This avoided being locked-in to a single vendor and many of the pitfalls of past government tech failures. Being locked into a vendor (or single solution) is essentially putting all of your eggs in one basket and increases the risk of failure. By breaking up a larger procurement, your team can isolate failure into a small piece of the system, rather than letting it impact the entire project, which is why we love modular contracting. We developed numerous resources for how to do this better in government, including the Agile Software Development Solicitation Guide.

As an example, 18F helped the United States Tax Court navigate what they needed and avoid getting locked into a long-term, proprietary solution for their case management system. The Court had been locked into the same licensing agreement for software they’d originally bought in the 1980s, which was difficult for their users and almost impossible to update. 18F conducted a three-day workshop with the Court to develop the solicitation that described the overall objectives of the case management system, rather than imagining every requirement in advance. This way, the team could make ongoing adjustments to the features based on user research. This kind of approach helped to increase flexibility for the partner agency in really getting into what they – and their users – needed. All told, from the time the final solicitation was posted to the first commit of code, the acquisition process took just 70 days – which is light speed for a government procurement. Eventually, the Court migrated more than a terabyte of data – nearly 1 million cases going back to the 1970s – from the legacy vendor’s system to the new system, DAWSON, quickly and accurately.

Maintaining quality and also building trust

18F’s approach was to build trust among partners and capacity for product owners to better manage their digital tools and services. We did this by working together and coaching in modern IT practices, including helping partner agencies to be able to manage vendors better by creating shared understandings and accountability.

For example, we helped partners to set up a Quality Assurance Surveillance Plan (QASP) to evaluate the work a contractor does on behalf of a federal agency. A QASP contains a list of desired outcomes and a method to measure the outcome’s success which both parties have agreed to: the federal agency by writing it and the contractor by accepting the contract. This allows all parties to remain on the same page for what’s expected. It helps to develop shared understanding, trust, and a way to effectively – and efficiently – work together toward the shared goals. It also makes sure that deliverables are objectively measurable and tied to outcomes.

Assisted acquisition

In support of our partner agencies, 18F would sometimes use our assisted acquisition authority, which allows a contracting office to acquire goods and services on behalf of another federal agency. We piloted assisted acquisition with our partners, including request for quotations (RFQ) to small businesses with experience in open source development and user research. Our acquisition specialists were experts in IT vendor management and engaged thoughtfully with possible vendors from the start. We used a phased valuation approach to ensure that any teams selected would be able to apply modern IT practices including iterative software development, user research, and open source approaches.

This type of process allows our partners to learn and build their capacity alongside a trusted procurement professional. Kind of like when you take a friend who knows a lot about cars to the car dealership when you’re buying a car. 18F would transition step-by-step these aspects to the partners by setting them up for success including a QASP to help ensure what’s delivered by the vendors is informed by user needs, meets the product owners’ vision, and follows best practices for open source software.

Pool of agile vendors

18F helped pioneer developing a pool of well-qualified agile vendors capable of delivering software in an agile way. With a pool of trusted agile vendors, partners were able to move more quickly in getting their modernization efforts off the ground.

Once we selected these vendors, they would be placed into a contracting vehicle called the Agile Delivery Services Blanket Purchase Agreement, or Agile BPA for short. Then, agencies could work with 18F to select vendors from this small pool to work on technology projects. We set up the Agile BPA in the hopes of streamlining the acquisition process to get program teams what they needed sooner.

These approaches worked.

These illustrative examples show that there are ways to work effectively and efficiently with all stakeholders to create trust and shared goals. 18F demonstrated that these ways of working yield effective and efficient digital solutions for the government and the public. Agencies were eager to continue to work with us. (Before we were eliminated, 18F had agreements signed to work with partners through 2026.) As part of our culture of working in the open, we shared our learning and created a de-risking guide for anyone to learn from what we found to work.

While the elimination of 18F is not how any of us wanted this to go, we want the American public to be aware of what good acquisition practices are. Chaos and breaking trust in partners, including vendors, is not a strategy. This type of work doesn’t need to be adversarial – in fact, that type of combative approach breeds distrust and inefficiency at its most basic levels, and worse at higher levels.

Yes, there are rules for these processes. They are there for important reasons.

Sometimes laws, rules, and regulations related to contracting and acquisitions have been called roadblocks. However, these are often there for important reasons, including legal requirements from laws passed by Congress, the need for an equal playing field, and avoiding possible corruption or nepotism. Procurement issues, including profiteering, have a history dating back to the American Revolutionary War. The government’s need for spending its money better has been among the country’s laws since 1792, leading up to the Federal Acquisition Regulation of today.

While we can certainly streamline certain processes in government, we don’t want to simplify them to a point where a political appointee could award a contract to their business friends or family members. There are reasons why certain parts of the process need to be at “arm’s length” to retain impartiality, competition, and transparency. The vision for the Federal Acquisition Regulation 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. We hope this vision isn’t lost due to political or corrupt intentions as the federal contracting workforce is depleted by DOGE and replaced with partisanship.