Acquisition advice: Cannibalize your market (no, not literally!)

Dawn Meyerriecks, deputy director of national intelligence for acquisition and technology, told an industry audience that she's taking a more aggressive, private-sector-oriented approach to contracting.

Meyerriecks is an old hand at government technology acquisitions. She was chief technology officer and technical director of the Defense Information Systems Agency’s Joint Interoperability and Engineering Organization for seven years before doing a stint in the private sector as senior vice president for product technologies at AOL. In her current job, she’s responsible for managing acquisitions for the intelligence community.

From her experience in the private sector, she told the audience the government must be much smarter about how it buys technology, especially big-ticket items such as satellites.

So she's well-qualified to advise an audience on contracting tactics — in this case, at the Federal Networks 2011 conference. Her message: Don't get complacent just because you won an award. The contract times will be shorter and much more competitive.

"If you're not cannibalizing your market, somebody else will," she said.