18F/18f.gsa.gov

---
title: "An Acquisition Retrospective"
date: 2020-03-18
authors:
- rebecca-refoy-sidibe
- ashley-owens
- omid-ghaffari-tabrizi
- michelle-mcnellis
tags:
- acquisition services
- modern practices
- how we work
excerpt: "The Centers of Excellence and 18F worked together with the General Services Administration’s Region 1 Assisted
Acquisition Services to create the Discovery BPA, which allows the Centers of Excellence to quickly staff the industry side of the their teams embedded at agency partners."
---

TTS continuously iterates on our acquisition practices to incorporate
lessons learned and what we have seen in previous acquisitions across
the public sector. Based on the 18F [Agile Blanket Purchase Agreement (BPA) lessons learned](https://18f.gsa.gov/2018/07/26/what-we-learned-from-building-a-pool-of-agile-vendors/),
TTS knew we wanted to incorporate these lessons in the acquisition work
with the [Centers of Excellence (CoE)](https://coe.gsa.gov/)’s first
two agency partners. The industry partners who helped with our initial
Discovery work at those two agencies helped provide examples and “tests”
based on industry best practices that the government as a whole (not
just CoE) could use to identify quality contractors to work with.

[18F](https://18f.gsa.gov/) and CoE wanted to build a vehicle that
provided CoE the ability to staff new agency discovery teams, with
industry partners who specialized in key functional areas. Additionally,
it was important to provide our agency partners with greater flexibility
to perform discovery work while providing CoE the ability to keep up
with demand.

CoE and 18F worked together with the [Region 1 Assisted Acquisition Services](https://www.gsa.gov/about-us/regions/welcome-to-the-new-england-region-1/products-and-services/assisted-acquisition-services)
(AAS) to create the [Discovery BPA](https://coe.gsa.gov/2019/03/14/discovery-bpa-rfq.html), which will
allow CoE to quickly staff the industry side of the CoE teams embedded
at agency partners. Together, this team of federal employees and
contractors, among other agency partner teams, will work towards
completing the discovery and assessment efforts required to lay the
foundation for enterprise-wide transformation.

The Discovery BPA team consists of acquisition professionals dedicated
to securing the highest quality contractors to help the CoE achieve its
mission, while providing transparency and plain language acquisition
documents for our government colleagues and industry partners.

**Region 1 Assisted Acquisition Service**

**Centers of Excellence**
- Omid Ghaffari Tabrizi
- Michelle McNellis
- Brendan Mahoney

**18F Acquisition**
- Ashley Owens
- Rebecca Refoy-Sidibe
- Miatta Myers
- Mark Hopson


Below are the aims that we hoped to achieve:

## Healthy competition

We knew that due to the varied functional areas we were seeking partners
in, and the industry feedback received from our draft RFQ, it would be a
challenging feat for small businesses to participate if they had to
first be found technically acceptable in three functional areas. We
wanted businesses of all sizes and socio-economic categories to be able
to compete for this vehicle which resulted in requiring changes to the
minimum number of functional areas a contractor had to be able to
provide solutions within.

## Robust evaluation

Our assumption was that due to the amount of interest in CoE work, we
would receive a substantial amount of bids. Therefore, we wanted to
create evaluation criteria that would allow for those contractors who
truly understood what CoE needs from their industry partners to be
highlighted.

## Speed

CoE requires a solution that allows for orders to be competed quickly
and receive high quality bids. Our hypothesis is that by having a pool
of contractors who have proven they understand what CoE requires and can
provide best-in-class discovery and assessment work, we’ll be able to
maintain healthy competition among awardees in the pools, which along
with the speed advantage of using an established BPA will allow us to
focus on taking agency partners to the implementation phase as quickly
as possible.

After receiving 121 responses to the draft RFQ, we made [significant changes](https://www.gsa.gov/about-us/newsroom/news-releases/gsa-seeking-bids-for-discovery-bpa-for-centers-of-excellence)
based on what we heard from industry. The incredible amount of feedback
from industry, which was incorporated into meaningful and innovative
changes to the evaluation process to allow for greater small business
participation. The Discovery BPA will provide the CoE with a contract
vehicle that includes partners who demonstrate a fundamental
understanding of the challenges—and solutions—facing IT modernization
efforts. The partners demonstrated the capability to develop solutions
that will allow CoE agency partners to begin implementing best practices
throughout their agencies and use modern technologies and techniques.

One of the changes made to the evaluation process, based on the market
research feedback, was the Technical Challenge Question. This involved
limiting the amount of time to address the type of problem CoE faces in
that particular functional area, and requesting a response in 1500
characters, which is about half a page. The fast turnaround time and the
need for clarity and brevity is a very real example of the goal for the
CoE effort -- quick quality transformation.

“With just about 1 out of 3 of the agreements going to small businesses,
we have achieved an impressive cross-section of not only American
industry, but technological prowess,” said Executive Director of CoE,
Bob De Luca. “We believe that each company will provide us with not only
the ability to discover and assess issues related to the legacy systems
and processes currently in place, but to develop recommendations that,
once implemented, will provide modern day technological solutions to
problems our citizens face when interacting with government services.”

This BPA was an enormous effort by teams across the Federal Acquisition
Service and GSA as a whole, with agreements going to [a total of 22 contractors](https://www.gsa.gov/about-us/newsroom/news-releases/gsa-issues-discovery-bpa-for-centers-of-excellence).
That collaboration and cooperation with our pool of contractors and
across the government continues with the first orders. We’re excited to
see the outcome of the first iteration of our BPA now that it is
underway.