Pumping up the procurement playbook

The Department of Health and Human Services is experimenting with an innovative IT acquisition playbook that assembles templates that contracting officers could use to make quicker and more inventive buys.

HHS Chief Technology Officer Bryan Sivak said his agency asked a contracting officer at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to put the playbook together using some of the more innovative procurement methods allowed under the Federal Acquisition Regulation.

"The FAR has room for some interesting things," Sivak said during a panel discussion on innovation at the Management of Change conference in Cambridge, Md. Unfortunately, there is usually "no time for procurement officers to explore those processes," he added.

A CDC contracting officer detailed to the HHS secretary's office who has a history of taking innovative approaches to acquisition is running the playbook program, which has been underway at HHS for the past few weeks, Sivak said.

In an interview with FCW after the panel discussion, he said the program entails creating flow charts for IT acquisitions and recommending innovative pathways for purchases under the FAR. The approach should "make it easier to digest and run procurements," he added, while giving program managers room to experiment with unfamiliar processes.

Even though he has procurement officials "lining up at the door" to try the method, Sivak said he intends to start small by seeing how the first few procurements turn out before opening the program to more projects. The objective is not only to support effective procurement efforts but also to spread the spirit of innovation throughout his organization. Because the procurements would be done under his office, he's acting as a "risk aggregator" for others who might not otherwise try a new method.

He wants to develop the program quickly and not subject it to an overly long developmental period. A draft of the playbook should come out in the next couple of months, he said.