Thursday, February 24, 2011

Reducing non-Value-added Requirements

Last week, the Department of Defense announced the next phase of its goal to reform some of its cost-inflating practices. DoD understands that contractors expend costs and other resources on mandates, reporting requirements, and other acquisition practices that do not add value added to systems and services delivered to DoD. The Department is now asking contractors to identify those issues and back them up with specific, credible, convincing data.

During the summer of 2010, industry voluntarily furnished nearly 500 suggestions to the Department of Defense. Some suggestions were adopted right away but many others involved changes that can only be made over the longer term or require additional follow-up data before they are ready for possible action. DoD is hoping that its new request for comments will yield the additional data that it needs along with information about some additional areas of non-value-added cost.

DoD plans to use these submissions as part of its internal deliberations and expects to seek further industry comment at a public meeting where industry experts in contract management and finance will offer comments on the topic areas raised to ensuring that the results are not idiosyncratic or overly influenced by particular companies' cost structures.

This is a great opportunity for contractors to participate in the development of procurement policies and procedures.

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