The New Bottom Line

he governmentwide campaign to demonstrate "results" for the long-suffering taxpayer is nowhere better seen than in agencies' procurement offices. Driven by threats of downsizing, and by competition that's providing incentives to serve the customer, these offices are striving to meet client needs quickly and effectively.

So we have witnessed the emergence of new federal buying techniques:

• Using charge cards for small purchases.
• Evaluating contractors on oral proposals.
• Making awards on the basis of good prior performance by contractors.
• Using the Web to market and inform.
• Simplifying purchases through the use of previously negotiated contracts.

Such innovative contracting techniques belie the reputation of agency procurement offices as regulatory gatekeepers and nay-sayers. Like others in today's "can-do" reinvention environment, they are responding to the public's search for ways to measure government's bottom line. For government, that is easier said than done.

In the acquisition community, the bottom line answer used to be: "Getting the agency what it needs through a fair and open process." Process was the important word, and components of it included integrity (dealing impartially with all parties), accountability, openness of procedures and policies, and competition (through widely publicized solicitations.) A process-centered view seemed appropriate in the early 1990s, with the weight of the Pentagon's Ill Wind procurement scandal still heavy and procurement integrity legislation relatively new. Procurement staffs had one clear goal: keeping themselves and their agencies out of trouble. If that meant sacrificing efficiency and speed, too bad.

Today, "getting results" is the new standard for agencies and thus, too, for their service organizations, including procurement offices. Acquisition employees are under particular pressure in a downsizing environment. They know that procurement offices best able to satisfy their agency and program customers quickly and effectively are most likely to stay in business. Ironically, procurement offices accustomed to using competition to get best values now are feeling the pressure of competition themselves. Agencies no longer have to rely on internal acquisition bureaucracies. Instead, they can turn to external acquisition organizations and vehicles.

The evidence of this change is found across the government. The Federal Aviation Administration was recently given a clean slate to write its own procurement rules by a Congress fed up with systems not being acquired on time or meeting the agency's needs. The Commerce Department has developed its streamlined Concept of Operations program, aiming to radically cut its procurement lead time. The Defense, Transportation and Health and Human Services departments are marketing their own governmentwide, multiple- award task-order contracts, touting their abilities to satisfy agency needs quickly. At Transportation, for example, a new office is marketing the agency's multiple-award Information Technology Omnibus Procurement contract across the government. Sales mean money for the operation, since it operates purely on a reimbursable basis.

The most radical transformation has occurred at the General Services Administration, with the revamping of its Multiple Award Schedule contracts. By removing maximum ordering limitations, encouraging agencies to cut better deals with suppliers than the prices already negotiated, and allowing schedule contractors to team up to give a customer a "solution," GSA has thrown the gauntlet to the rest of the government's procurement offices.

And program officials across the government are listening and buying. The Navy's Tactical Advanced Computer Project Office, for example, recently shifted from a traditional indefinite-delivery, indefinite- quantity contracting process to using a Blanket Purchase Agreement. Under such agreements, agencies negotiate deals with GSA Schedule vendors that allow them to fill recurring needs while taking advantage of quantity discounts and savings in time, paperwork and money. The Navy points to a purchase of notebook computers requiring only two staff people over a two-month period versus a six- to eight-person, 12- to 24-month process for a more traditional procurement. Savings amounted to nearly $6 million, the Navy says. Not least important was a shift from a 1,000-page specification to a five-page functional Request for Quotation that was delivered electronically.

Responsiveness to agency customers, then, appears to be the new bottom line, the internal mandate as well as the government wide battleground for procurement offices wanting to demonstrate their competence and relevance.

In their press for effectiveness and speed, these offices will have to guard against cutting corners lest concerns about competition and fair play arise anew. For it would be a shame to see attention to process once again overtake today's emphasis on performance as the key measurement of procurement success.

Allan V. Burman, a former administrator of Federal Procurement Policy, is president of Jefferson Solutions in Washington.