Developing more digital acquisition professionals
Summary
As part of the White House’s Office of Management and Budget’s Acquisition Innovation Labs initiative, the Digital Acquisition Accelerator was a pilot training program designed to accelerate the development of digital acquisition experts across the government.
The challenge
The modern delivery of information technology, including human-centered design, lean-agile development, open-source software, and cloud computing, all represent fundamentally new ways of procuring products and services from the vendor community. But how do you induce the necessary institutional changes at the scale of government?
The solution
To address this challenge, Chris Cairns and Shashank Khandelwal architected and led a “train-the-trainer” program designed to help agencies establish their own multidisciplinary team of digital acquisition experts.
The program brought together expert trainers and coaches from 18F, the Presidential Innovation Fellows, and the U.S. Digital Service, representing the first-ever such cross-organizational collaboration. These trainers worked with agencies to assemble their teams and build up their expertise through a variety of development techniques, including classroom training, hands-on learning (involving real-world acquisitions), and knowledge capture and sharing.
The results
- Pilot program announced to all agencies via formal memo from the White House’s Office of Management and Budget
- Over a dozen agencies applied to participate
- Produced first-ever, government-wide guidance on digital acquisitions (“Digital Acquisition Playbook”)