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In Government Contracting, Inertia Kills, Speed Saves

The current procurement model will fail miserably with new technologies.

Existing government procurement processes virtually guarantee failure in efforts to incorporate innovative technologies. The long timeline essentially ensures the technology will be obsolete well before it is delivered.

These were some of many points driven home by Meg Whitman, president and CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise. She spoke at the Thursday keynote luncheon at Defensive Cyber Operations Symposium (DCOS) 2016, being held in the Washington, D.C., convention center, April 20-22, where she was interviewed one-on-one by Terry Halvorsen, Defense Department chief information officer.

“Things are moving in technology much more rapidly than I’ve ever seen,” Whitman declared. Echoing remarks made earlier, she said both government and industry will require cultural change, and government must change how it does business. Describing a long-term plan as the opposite of an agile relationship, she observed “Often these [government] contracts feel like straight jackets to us and to your people [in government].”

Even waiting for a just five-year window will result in a missed technology trend, she continued. And, 10-year contracts do not work. After seven years, both sides realize nothing new has been delivered, and innovation has passed by the original technology goal.

“We have to change the way procurement is done,” Whitman stated. “Government is losing out on the best of industry."