_posts/2017-01-10-mark-hopson-negotiating-on-americas-behalf.md
---
title: "Mark Hopson: Negotiating on America’s behalf"
authors:
- jhunter
tags:
- staff profiles
- acquisition services
excerpt: "Mark Hopson joined 18F in January, 2016 after working as a Contracting Officer at the Census Bureau. He works for the TTS Office of Acquisitions on call orders for the Agile BPA, procurement strategy, and other projects that are helping advance the way that government buys technology."
image: /assets/img/team/mark-hopson.jpg
hero: false
---
*Since mid-2016 we've [profiled
members](https://18f.gsa.gov/tags/staff-profiles/) across the
Technology Transformation Service (TTS) team. Mark Hopson joined 18F last January after working as a Contracting Officer at the Census
Bureau. He works for the TTS Office of Acquisitions on Agile BPA call
orders, procurement strategy, and other projects that are helping
advance the way that government buys technology.*
**Jeannine Hunter: What is your role at TTS? How would you describe it
to someone who doesn’t work in the government?**
**Mark Hopson:** I’m a contracting lead here at TTS, so I work with
agency partners and other project teams whenever they are involved in
the acquisition process. Essentially, I’m a personal shopper for the
government. It’s my job to design and ensure a fair, transparent, and
competitive process whenever the government spends taxpayer money to buy
anything necessary for accomplishing its various missions. It’s very
complex in practice, but it’s basically negotiation on America’s behalf.
I love getting the taxpayer the best deal possible and saving money,
because that’s one of the best ways to spur true innovation.
**JH: Can you share a little bit about your previous work, education and
training experience before 18F/TTS?**
**MH:** I have a great range of interests, which means that I had quite
a bizarre educational journey that included a brief stint at art
school. I discovered that I was very much drawn to human conflict having
volunteered throughout high school at a community mediation center. My
experiences there really stuck with me through that bizarre journey. So,
ultimately, I graduated summa cum laude with a dual major of History and
Conflict Analysis and Dispute Resolution. After that I went on to get my
law degree. Basically, all of my formal education focused on
international and environmental conflicts, which I focused on during my
law school coursework as well, including a semester in South Africa.
Throughout school, between classes or my clinical duties, I was working
as a jack-of-all trades from training, facilitating, intake, etc. My
greatest enjoyment came as a mediator because I truly loved being able
to take parties who were at total odds at the start to successfully
helping them resolve their own conflicts and generate lasting
agreements. I’ve done around 100 cases by now.
Because of its size, TTS really feels like I have returned to the world
of small non-profit organizations. I joined the federal workforce after
someone recommended that, as a lawyer who likes reaching consensus
through alternative methods like mediation rather than litigation, I
should really check out government contracting. I didn’t really know
what to expect, but I certainly was not disappointed. I’m helping people
develop and reach productive agreements every single day, almost with
every single conversation.
**JH: Why’d you want to work here?**
**MH:** I really love working for the federal government because it’s
the only place that has so many amazing missions and equally amazing
people dedicated towards ensuring success. I actually got to know 18F
from working with them at my prior agency. Even though a lot of folks in
TTS and 18F are new to government, they all have that same kind of
spirit, patriotism, and motivation, which made it easy to transition
from my prior agency. When the chance to join 18F arose, I leapt at it
for both the challenge working across a broad range of missions in
government and the opportunity to work with these truly amazing folks.
**JH: What specialties do you bring to TTS?**
**MH:** Even though I’ve been an operational contracting officer for five
years now, the skills, methods, and processes that I used in the
conflict resolution field haven’t really changed. My two main
specialties are alternative dispute resolution and procurement, both of
which have the similar foundations and influences.
**JH: Share a little bit about how you view the projects you work on.**
**MH:** So far, everything I’ve experienced and seen with our agency
partners demonstrates that the “solution” is in the “problem.” To that
end, we’re not coming in to “rescue” anyone. I really enjoy how open and
welcoming our agency partners have been so far. Everyone seems to really
love the opportunity to explore a thorny challenge in different ways and
fostering the type of conversations and generate options that may not
have existed. For example, the [Agile
BPA](https://pages.18f.gov/ads-bpa/) is a great place for us to
purposefully experiment with procedures and methods that can be applied
to the acquisition space writ large. I’ve personally learned some things
that will be shared on our blog that folks can implement right now when
it comes to adapting the FAR to support agile development rather than
waterfall. There’s also some amazing opportunities around the migration
to cloud computing across the entire federal government, both civilian
and defense, and it’s one of my areas of passion to demystify and
simplify the acquisition process for buying it while complying with the
FAR.
**JH: What excites you about the future of TTS?**
**MH:** The thing that excites me most about the future of TTS is the
amazing group of people that I get to work with every day. This includes
not just my immediate co-workers but our agency partners as well. I get
energy and excitement from their missions more so than our own, and I
have gotten to see a broad spectrum of highly-dedicated civil servants,
and contractors, try to further their missions, and by extension, better serve the American public.