Homeland bureau tests new acquisition strategy

The Homeland Security Department's Bureau of Customs and Border Protection is changing the way it buys what it needs to protect American borders.

Last week, the agency unveiled its new approach, which involves coordinating purchases made throughout the organization and aggressively pursuing better deals through an acquisition technique known as strategic sourcing. The strategy leverages the government's buying power.

Since last October, CBP procurement analysts in Indianapolis have been collecting and analyzing fiscal 2004 data about what and how the agency buys goods and services. Now that information is about to start affecting contracts. One of the first pilot projects will involve body armor, which protects 30,000 CBP law enforcement officials from projectiles.

John Ely, executive director for the CBP Office of Procurement, said body armor was chosen because it's relatively simple, as opposed to complicated pieces of technology.

"You don't want to fall on your face in the first sourcing pilot. If you hit the wrong thing, [or] anything contentious in the workforce--cell phones, copiers, things that mean a lot to the masses--you don't want to start there," said Ely.

The dogs used by Border Patrol officials also are being targeted for strategic sourcing. "People are studying where and what kind of dogs are bought. We want to make it more uniform and steadier," said Ely.

The team in charge of strategically sourcing body armor has started visiting and interviewing potential suppliers. Ely said many are small businesses, and CBP is considering restricting the competition for body armor contracts to small businesses.

Small businesses often are concerned that they may be left out of strategic sourcing deals, since the technique involves streamlining and bulk buys. Ely said that while that is a natural reaction, "strategic sourcing does not preclude us from meeting our socioeconomic goals."

In addition to saving money on contract prices, Ely said he also expects savings from changing workplace habits. Instead of buying printers for employees' desks, buying a machine that can copy, fax and scan paper for an office to share not only reduces costs on machines, but can also lead employees to print fewer sheets because they have to walk further to pick up the copies, Ely said.

For that reason, strategic sourcing can also ruffle employees' feathers - Ely used the word "traumatic."

So far, however, he said employees have been cooperative.

He declined to specify the amount of savings he thinks strategic sourcing can generate for the agency, but said he should know in the next six months.

"You will see increases in quality across the board. You get the attention of some of the real players, and commitment from the commercial side that's stronger than onesy-twosy buying," said Ely.

In May, OMB announced a governmentwide strategic sourcing initiative that requires agency executives to select three commodities to strategically source by October.