of the Government and is not specifically addressed in the FAR, nor prohibited by law (statute or case law), Executive order or other regulation, Government mem- bers of the Team should not assume it is prohibited. Rather, absence of direction should be interpreted as permitting the Team to innovate and use sound business judgment that is otherwise consistent with law and within the limits of their authority. Contracting officers should take the lead in encouraging business process innovations and ensuring that business decisions are sound. The new law can encourage acqui- sition professionals to utilize the FAR in favor of innovation, rather than using the FAR as a security blanket. Beyond the FAR, the law should en- courage use of the so-called alterna- tive acquisition authorities, one of which is OTA, which is the subject of a July 2023 DoD Other Transactions Guide . Obviously, the new law must draw upon the lessons learned from two re- cent initiatives: the Immersive Commercial Acquisition Program (ICAP) , offered jointly by DAU and the DIU, and the Defense Civilian Training Corps. Acquisition workforce exposure to academia and industry seems particularly important in these initia- tives. In addition to these welcome- the-opportunity-to-think incentives,
Proof is provided by the limited use of an alternative acquisition Other Transaction Authority (OTA). Accord- ing to data on $470 billion in FY 2023 DoD outsourcing, OTAs accounted for less than $11 billion. In short, OTAs ac- counted for somewhere around 2.3 percent of all DoD contract awards. I maintain that Congress can modify this widely acknowledged risk-aversion by enacting legislation similar to Goldwater-Nichols, focus- ing in this case on acquisition profes- sionals rather than military officers. This initiative can be easier and more successfully implemented than may initially appear. First, OTA probably is the most popular and robust alternative ac- quisition authority to the FAR, since OTA’s creation in the National Aero- nautics and Space Act in 1958. Con- gress repeatedly has encouraged use of this acquisition authority in 19 sep- arate National Defense Authorization Acts between 1989 and 2023. The FY 2017 NDAA mandate to provide education in the use of OTAs has been ignored. Congressional lea- ders in national defense have ex- pressed publicly their frustration with DoD’s slow and haphazard adoption of emerging technologies. An ex- ample is an article that appeared in Defense News (Oct. 18, 2024) , authored by House Armed Services Committee members presenting their views. Section 832 of the NDAA for FY 2025 also mandates training in ac- quisition and sustainment. And ac- quisition professionals are already accustomed to legislation requiring career development and manage- ment under the 1990 Defense Ac- quisition Workforce Improvement Act (DAWIA) and its 2022 update entitled Back-to-Basics. In short, Congress may be ready for a law based on the Goldwater- Nichols precedent, and acquisition professionals may be ready to adhere to the law. It may be worth noting that junior officers in the U.S. mili- tary armed services have no problem doing JPME courses and, at least from
my personal experience, seem con- tent doing so. The question arises, of course, as to the contents of the law. Most of Goldwater-Nichols is about structures and processes. But joint education, formulated in JPME, became neces- sary to implement the law from the combatant command level on down. The incentive, at least initially, was the requirement for joint education, and joint tours, for achieving promotion to flag or general rank. In the case of acquisition profes- sionals, I believe the incentives can be broader and more nuanced. I suggest education, or learning how to think, as distinct from training, or learning what to think. DAWIA and its revision in Back-to-Basics establish training. As with the experience of JPME and the officer corps, acquisition profession- als may be encouraged to think and to innovate when they realize that Con- gress, in a new law, has demonstrated that it is paying attention to them. If necessary, innovation can be encouraged even within the confines of the FAR. One obvious example is found in FAR 1.102-5: If a policy or procedure, or a particular strategy or practice, is in the best interest
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