Streamlining how agencies procure software
Summary
The Agile Delivery Services Marketplace was a federal-wide, pre-vetted pool of vendors who helped agencies use modern agile software development practices to build digital services.
The challenge
Following the Healthcare.gov launch failure, federal agencies increasingly looked to agile as an alternative to waterfall for delivering digital services. Finding a vendor who truly excelled at agile, however, was difficult. Even when agencies could identify strong vendors, traditional contracting methods often failed to:
(a) reveal the makers from the fakers
(b) protect the government’s data and source-code ownership rights to prevent vendor lock-in
(c) acquire services at the speed of need
The solution
To address these challenges, Chris Cairns, Robert Read, and other team members within the General Services Administration created the first-ever federal-wide contract vehicle for vendors specializing in agile delivery services (for example, user-centered design, agile software development, and DevOps) using several groundbreaking approaches:
- A “show, don’t tell” or “prototype-as-proposal” approach in which vendors were required to submit working prototypes (instead of written narratives) using openFDA as the basis for evaluating capabilities
- A robust contractual clause that, by default, requires all vendors to commit all data, source code, and documentation produced for the government to the public domain
- A combination of a Blanket Purchase Agreement under IT Schedule 70, ready-made assets (for example, solicitation templates), performance work statements, oral presentations, and other methods for rapidly issuing and awarding task/work orders
The results
- Attracted more than 700 attendees to industry outreach events
- Received more than 200 proposal submissions, all delivered via public GitHub repositories
- Completed technical evaluation of all proposals within weeks using a three-person team
- Issued awards to 17 vendors
- Evaluation methodology successfully withstood eight protests
- Lauded by industry, Congress, and the White House Office of Management and Budget as a model for agencies
- Inspired several federal, state, and local agencies (for example, Department of Homeland Security, Environmental Protection Agency, State of California, and State of Mississippi) to create similar marketplaces
- Used by nearly a dozen federal agencies who experienced improved contractual outcomes