Wanted: Plain English Translation of Tricare Sole Source Contract

TRICARE, the Defense Department's health insurance plan, awarded a $218,170.37 sole source contract last Friday to an outfit called Simpler North America to support its offices in the Puget Sound region with what appears to be consulting and conference services.

I say “appears to be” because I have a hard time comprehending the language in the justification and approval notice for the contract, which bears only a faint resemblance to the English language as I know it.

Simpler North America, the notice said, will provide “health care consultant support to provide strategic planning conference facilitation, senior leader training, deployment advice, coaching and mentoring, and project execution services on Strategy, Process Innovation, and Lean Six Sigma (LSS) concepts and methodologies for service and transactional process improvement in support of the 2012 Puget Sound Multi-Service Market Strategic Planning Conference.”

Huh?

Simpler North America is the only company that can do all of the above, TRICARE said in the sole source notice, as it is the only company that has a “specialized understanding” of the requirements.

I agree. It takes something special to decrypt this string of buzzwords that made my brain ache.