Letter: Requirements documents should be clear

Regarding"Editorial: Acquisition on the agenda"

Requirements come from the program offices, not the contracting officers. There is a massive problem with requirements generation from the program offices. Contracting officers can only do so much to make a purse out of a pig's ear. The onus is clearly on the program offices to create clear, unambiguous and sufficient requirements documentation.

The overworked contracting officer can only say no so many times until he or she has little choice but to issue the solicitation. It's not just additional, better trained contracting officers that we need, but more and better trained program/project management systems. The procurement starts with the requirements process. Until that issue is addressed, we will continue to have problems across the board.

A poorly written requirement can lead to exponential problems down the road. I recommend that we make [classes for writing] statements of work/performance work statements/statements of objectives mandatory for contracting officers, contracting officer's technical representatives, and program/project management certification.

Eric

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