Commercial Solutions Opening
TABLE 4. CSO CROSS TALKS—INDUSTRY INTERACTION
Category
Findings
Contracting organizations and PCOs should consider use of AFWERX Google Suite as a secure one-stop shop for correspondence, documentation, and meetings with vendors (proved to be an effective tool resulting in 6-month award time savings). PCOs should allow industry to have access to and communication with end users in a controlled way.
BP (S)
BP
BP
PCOs should survey industry for inputs into the CSO process.
Contracting organizations and PCOs should use social media and a wide variety of online options to reach potential offerors (some market segments, like cyber, will actively avoid resources that are too associated with the government). PCOs should encourage program managers to reach out through their contacts and colleagues for potential offerors.
BP
BP
BP Contracting organizations and PCOs should learn about the market segments they are trying to attract and how they typically find opportunities. Note. Adapted from DoD OT Quarterly Commercial Solutions Opening Cross Talk [Bulletin], Department of Defense (2022).
Implications of Findings Most of the listed CSO Cross Talk comments were categorized as best practices since the agency representatives primarily framed their feedback as subjective recommendations to other agencies. Objective strengths and weaknesses may have been few in number as a result of the noted lack of accurate CSO data reporting in Table 2. It is possible to infer that some of the best practices could be due to a strength being the flexibility of the CSO solicitation technique. Alternatively, a weakness denoting ambiguity or confusion could also be inferred when considering the extensive best practices, the majority of which were categorized under Internal Agency Processes. These practices were subsequently recommended to ensure efficiency and successful contracts that, otherwise, may not be achieved. The most comments, categorized under Internal Agency Processes, are also notable in the types of recommendations for which the acquisition community expressed a need. We anticipate that these recommendations will be well-received and utilized. Finally, note that a few of the observations are duplicative, but they were all retained to highlight how multiple agencies made similar comments that could influence prioritization of recommendations at the end of this article. Expanding beyond just the limited number of strengths and weaknesses identified in
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Defense ARJ , Spring 2025, Vol. 32 No. 1
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