Become a digital acquisition leader
Learn what it takes to transform how your agency procures in today’s digital world.
Learn the essentials
Understand the fundamental concepts, tools, and techniques that your organization needs to master in order to excel at digital acquisition.
Learn to lead
Understand how modern approaches to delivering technology, such as agile, have changed the way your agency needs to buy. Learn how to lead your agency through the process of adopting modern procurement methods successfully.
Reinvent procurement
Fundamentally change the way you and your agency procures products and services from industry. Experience greater collaboration with vendors, more breakthrough innovations, faster delivery of value, higher quality results, and lower costs.
Engage in a tailor-made learning experience
Led by our team of master coaches and educators, our online learning environment is designed to immerse you in the core fundamentals of digital acquisition and how to use this knowledge to lead your agency.
Expert instructors
Our instructors are recognized experts in the field of digital acquisition, and are eager to share their past and current experiences with you. Through our course, you’ll have the chance to engage with the pioneers of modern procurement techniques.
Distilled content
We know how valuable your time is, and as a busy executive, you need a learning experience that gets right to the point. Our course is a 1-day distillation of the core elements of our longer, 6-month, custom-made DITAP program.
Focused learning
Through a suite of presentation material, case studies, focused discussions, and our team’s expertise, you’ll learn the essentials of digital acquisition and how to transform the way your agency procures.
What you’ll learn
In this course, you’ll learn how to translate critical concepts and resources in the field of digital acquisition into effective, real-world practice at your agency.
Digital Services in the 21st Century Government
Learn the fundamentals of digital services, including agile software delivery, human-centered design, cloud computing, and X as a Service.
Understanding What You’re Buying
Learn how to determine customer needs, how to assess which digital services solutions are most likely to succeed given your agency’s current level of maturity, and how to conduct market research.
How to buy
Understand how to develop an acquisition strategy that effectively factors in customer needs, digital service maturity, market research findings, and digital acquisition best practices.
Awarding and Administering Digital Services Contracts
Learn proven tools and techniques for awarding and administering digital services contracts that actually deliver results.
Leading change as a digital acquisition professional
Master the leadership and communication skills you need to win stakeholder buy-in for digital acquisition.
Ready to get started?
As one of the first students to complete the DITAP program in 2016, I walked away with the critical know-how necessary to help change the way my agency acquires technology services. Because of what I learned, the contracting results that I experienced supporting some of the government’s most critical programs were the reasons why I became an acquisition professional in the first place.
Dan Levenson, Former Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Digital Service Contracting Advisor and Lead Contracting Officer for the Quality Payment Program
Meet your instructors
Learn from skilled instructors with unparalleled experience in the field.
Chris Cairns
Chris served as a White House Presidential Innovation Fellow, and co-founded 18F. He started and built 18F’s influential acquisition group, which specializes in digital acquisition methods. Chris is known for pioneering 18F’s agile acquisition framework, and for architecting the government’s first-ever agile vendor contract vehicle using a tech challenge.
Dan Levenson
Dan is a senior executive with Agile Six. He previously served as a certified digital acquisition expert and contracting officer for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). At CMS, Dan architected and managed a highly successful agile vendor contract vehicle, which supports programs such as the Quality Payment Program.
Robert Read, PhD
Robert served as a White House Presidential Innovation Fellow, and co-founded 18F. Originally trained by agile pioneer Kent Beck, Robert has over 15 years experience as an agile practitioner and coach. He holds a PhD in computer science, and is best known for writing a popular, multilingual guide on how to be a programmer.
Leslie Garner Franklin
Leslie brings nearly two decades of experience in user research, user experience design, product management, digital leadership, and instructional design. She started her career at Teach For America, and has worked for notable design firms such as EchoUser.
Dates and cost
Thu, Nov 7, 2024, 9:00 am – 5:00 pm ET
Register now
Get answers
Here are some questions that we’re typically asked, along with our responses:
The U.S. Digital Service and the Office of Federal Procurement Policy launched the DITAP program in order to increase the development of digital acquisition experts across government. By 2022, all federal acquisition professionals managing contracts of $7M or more will require FAC-C-DS certification. This certification can be obtained by completing our accredited DITAP training course, led by experts who pioneered the field as former members of 18F and the U.S. Digital Service.
To achieve mission success in today’s digital world, agencies must master the art of digital acquisition. Leaders arguably play the most important role in making this transition happen, but need to manage their time carefully. We’ve taken the core elements from our longer, 6-month DITAP course and distilled it into an executive-level, crash-course summary — perfect for those who need a learning experience that gets right to the point.
This course is designed primarily for agency leaders and executives who need a "Cliff Notes" version of our longer, more in-depth DITAP course. But that's not to say this course is only for executives. Anyone who plays a role in the lifecycle of an acquisition (for example, finance officer, legal counsellor, procurement officer, program manager, or technical manager) and needs a crash-course tour of modern digital acquisition will benefit greatly from this training.
None! Any amount of familiarity with modern practices and technologies will be helpful, but this course is designed to give you an introduction to the fundamentals of modern digital acquisition. As such, we don’t assume you come in with any more knowledge than maybe hearing the word "agile" a couple times.
Our default method of administering this course is remote. After you register, you’ll be given a Zoom weblink to join the meeting. We recommend that you download the Zoom web-based application prior to joining class.
Remote course delivery isn’t the only option, however. While we’ve designed the course to be virtual so that anyone, anywhere can sign up to learn about digital acquisition, we love to administer in-person training, too. If you’d like to schedule an in-person training for your organization, please reach out to us.
- Access to all course materials.
- Course certificate of completion.
- Other agency leaders, like you, who want a fast, concise delivery of the core elements of modern digital acquisition.
- Fellow acquisition professionals who are as passionate about changing procurement outcomes as you are.
- Future collaborators and friends.
Each course requires a minimum of 15 participants. The run dates are contingent upon meeting this minimum. You’ll be refunded 100% of the registration cost in the event that we cancel the course.
- You can submit a cancellation request 10 business days or more prior to the start of the course and receive a full refund, minus the Eventbrite processing fee, if applicable.
- If you submit a cancellation request fewer than 10 business days prior to the start of the course, you’ll be issued a credit toward a future Skylight training course. The credit will be equal to the amount paid for the initial course less any applicable fees.
- Should Skylight cancel the course for any reason, you’ll be refunded 100% of the registration cost.