18F/18f.gsa.gov

---
title: "What we learned from building a pool of agile vendors"
date: 2018-07-26
authors:
- rebecca-refoy-sidibe
- alla
tags:
- acquisition services
- agile bpa
- procurement
- lessons learned
excerpt: "In 2015, 18F had an idea for a better
way for federal agencies to hire private vendors to build products and
services using agile development techniques. We wanted to see what would
happen if we used an existing government process (called a blanket
purchase agreement) and tailored it to the needs of agencies looking to
update their digital services."
image:
---

In 2015, 18F had [an idea](https://18f.gsa.gov/2015/06/15/agile-bpa-is-here/) for a better way for federal agencies to hire private vendors to build products and
services using agile development techniques. We wanted to see what would
happen if we used an existing government process (called a blanket
purchase agreement) and tailored it to the needs of agencies looking to
update their digital services.

## What we tried

18F’s goal was to create a pool of vendors capable of delivering
software in an [agile way](https://agile.18f.gov/). Once we selected
these vendors they would be placed into a contracting vehicle called the
Agile Delivery Services Blanket Purchase Agreement, or Agile BPA for
short. Then, agencies could work with 18F to select vendors from this
small pool to work on technology projects. We set up the BPA in the
hopes of streamlining the acquisition process to get program teams what
they need sooner.

To select the vendors for the BPA, 18F selected [GSA’s Schedule
70](https://www.gsa.gov/technology/technology-purchasing-programs/it-schedule-70/buy-from-it-schedule-70)
as the pool from which to create the vehicle. We started with a Request
For Information (RFI) and an industry day to better understand how to
acquire agile delivery services up to the standards of 18F. From there,
we created a Request For Quotation (RFQ) where vendors were evaluated
based on a working prototype instead of a narrative document. We
ultimately awarded the contract to 17 vendors, both large and small,
from all over the country.

We knew we wanted great vendors that could build software using agile
and user-centered methodologies and that we needed these types of
acquisitions to work at the speed of agile development cycles. When we
set out to begin issuing task orders, we intended the projects to take
less than four weeks from solicitation to contract kickoff, and from
there no more than three months to deliver a [minimum viable
product](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_viable_product) for our
agency partners.

Today, we’re taking a look back at where the Agile BPA was able to
deliver value to federal agencies and where it fell short of our goals
for the project. In August 2015, we looked at [what we learned during
the solicitation
process](https://18f.gsa.gov/2015/08/28/announcing-the-agile-BPA-awards/),
and this blog post is the next step in learning from this experiment.

## How the Agile BPA helped

The Agile BPA has helped 18F work collaboratively with great vendors and
federal agencies to provide tremendous value to the public. Since 2015,
18F has awarded nine task orders off of the Agile BPA. Here are some
examples of our successes:

### A culture of trust

The Agile BPA helped us build a collaborative relationship grounded in
trust between government and vendors. Many of our agency partners have
seen past technology acquisitions fail to meet their goals, while
vendors have told us that government agencies aren’t always prepared or
adequately staffed to dedicate the amount of time it takes to complete a
project. 18F served as the Contracting Officer’s Representative (COR) on
all the buys and ensured that all packages contained transparent pre-
and post-award procedures to set clear expectations and
responsibilities. We experienced time and time again that the
partnership between Agile BPA vendors, 18F, and our partner agencies
created the kind of trusted relationship required to build and deploy
complicated software projects.

### Forest Service ePermitting

With the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service, we awarded and
completed three task orders off of the BPA to help them build a way for
the public to submit permit applications online. This tool will
streamline the process for both Forest Service employees and members of
the public who want to use Forest Service lands. With our vendor
partners, we’ve built a user intake form that connects to an existing
legacy database within the Forest Service, as well as a self-service
Christmas Tree Permitting system that allows members of the public to
pay for a permit online and print their permit at home.

### Department of State TalentMAP program

TalentMAP is a new system designed to transparently match and manage
Foreign Service employees to work assignments around the world. The
Department of State, 18F, and our vendor partner created a new search
function and navigation experience for TalentMAP. This allows Foreign
Service employees to understand and analyze positions as well as
information on the locales in which those positions were posted. The
hope is that this new system will allow State to be able to better carry
out its diplomatic mission by improving the searchability and accuracy
of position and competition data, streamlining the matching process, and
reducing the amount of time it takes for Foreign Service employees to
find and fill jobs.

### Defense Information System Agency e-QIP program

18F and our vendor partner built a new user interface for the
applicant-facing functionality of e-QIP, the central system for managing
background checks for federal employees. The project, called eApp,
maintains the existing purpose of e-QIP while prioritizing usability and
validating data to improve the quality of submitted information. These
enhancements will help people complete the lengthy and complex SF-86
while reducing the agency administrative burden required to manually
review forms.

## How the Agile BPA didn’t meet our goals

While the Agile BPA has been able to help us deliver great work for our agency partners, it wasn’t able to deliver in all of the ways we were hoping when we issued the RFQ in 2015:

### Time to award

18F does not have the authority to directly procure services for partner
agencies, so we work with other components of the General Services
Administration to use the BPA. That process has involved many
stakeholders and led to a slower-than-anticipated procurement process.
Originally, we had a goal to award task orders in a matter of weeks, but
over the course of two years we did not improve upon our timeline of
90-120 days.

### Competition

18F struggled to advertise task orders with enough lead time for vendors
to develop staffing proposals. Our modular contracting ([FAR Part
39](https://www.acquisition.gov/sites/default/files/current/far/html/Subpart%2039_1.html))
procurement strategy includes smaller software development buys, but the
process incentivized much greater competition for larger task orders
versus smaller ones. On top of that, we issued a lower volume of orders
than anticipated when we set up the BPA in 2015, so vendors could not
guarantee a steady stream of work from the Agile BPA alone. Therefore, a
number of 4-6 month task orders only received a couple of bids. Given
the different problems we’re trying to solve with our partners, we want
to ensure that their projects continue to see robust competition and
ensure quality commensurate with cost.

### User research resources

The original plan was for 18F to create three pools of vendors in the
Agile BPA, including a mix of skills, including, notably, user research
skills. GSA ultimately awarded only one pool, representing full stack
development skills, but not the breadth of user research talent we’d
envisioned. Subsequently, some vendors did not propose strong user
research talent when bidding on work, which put a burden on 18F to staff
these positions with our own team or to provide coaching to the vendor
teams. This process didn’t give our agency partners all the talent they
needed for user-centered agile software development and increased the
cost of a handful of our projects.

### Onboarding and offboarding

We saw a set of vendors in the BPA consistently not bidding on task
orders. When asked about the reason for abstaining, some indicated that
the work did not align with their core company strengths or business
objectives. However, we didn’t have a mechanism to easily offboard
vendors that weren’t interested in bidding on the work going forward.
Since we created the BPA from GSA Schedules, onboarding new vendors to
the vehicle would have required using the same evaluation criteria from the
original solicitation. This would have replicated the problems we
already experienced with getting the right labor category mix and
required our staff to take time away from client work.

## Conclusion

We’ve enjoyed working with the vendors on the Agile BPA, and we hope
they continue to participate in our acquisitions as we iterate on our
process. We’re determining our next steps, so keep an eye out for future
procurements. In the interim, you can take a look at all of our task
orders, procurement packages, and deliverables [on the Agile BPA
site](https://agile-bpa.18f.gov/orders/).

*This blog post was written with input from Laura Gerhardt, Hannah Kane,
and Waldo Jaquith.*