An introduction to the Bidscale White Paper

The ability of the United States Government (USG) to rapidly procure goods and services from private vendors is essential to national prosperity. However, America is facing a serious challenge. Buying goods and services fast enough to keep up with the speed of innovation is nearly impossible. With the current Federal procurement process, it can take up to seven years for a major acquisition to be awarded. That means by the time the technology is implemented, it’s already outdated.

The Federal acquisition system has evolved into a complex and time-consuming process restricted by cumbersome administrative overhead. Some of the delays can be attributed to the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR), a set of ever-changing rules all executive agencies must follow in their acquisition of goods and services.

While the FAR is crucial, it’s also crushing. The document states the vision is “to deliver on a timely basis the best value product or service to the customer while maintaining the public’s trust and fulfilling public policy objectives.”

Unfortunately, this vision has not been the reality. The FAR was created decades ago and currently consists of a patchwork of addendums and workarounds established to sustain its relevance in a world that has transformed from analog to digital. Since 1995, the size of the FAR has grown by 21 percent.

The FAR is not the only challenge. Legal hurdles and bid protests also routinely lengthen the overall contract award process and further stifle innovation. During the 2021 fiscal year, the United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) received 1,816 protests and only sustained about 15 percent, that means about 85 percent of the contested contracts were unnecessarily hindered by legal challenges.

As Will Roper, the former Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics noted back in 2020, “the service [the FAR] is using MacGyver-like techniques to make the system do things it wasn’t originally envisioned to do … I do not think the original drafters of the FAR would have imagined a complete 180. So we must hack the system to be relevant.”

Long lead times and challenges in understanding the procurement system have each become barriers-to-entry for many innovative, non-traditional companies. Representative Ken Calvert (R-CA), ranking member of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, said, “The U.S. Government has been a lousy partner, quite frankly. We get companies and we waste their time … and then we’re wondering why we’re not getting the technologies we want.” These non-traditional companies need to be better enabled, through policy, so they can persevere to bring cutting-edge technology to the USG.

So, how does America fix this system? How can the Federal procurement process be streamlined and strengthened? Two words, digital transformation.

Bidscale understands the vital nature of technological applicability to the USG and is committed to driving digital transformation to support America’s Contracting Officers. This is done by providing an out-of-the-box software experience tailored for Federal procurement. Bidscale users have exclusive access to built-in annotation and collaboration capabilities, which are designed to support the full lifecycle of source selection activities from proposal submission to evaluation and award.

Within Bidscale Select, dashboards and schedule management features allow Contracting Officers to coordinate evaluation teams, anticipate risks and bottlenecks, and stay on schedule throughout the source selection period.

The result is a digitally enhanced procurement process that allows Contracting Officers to deliver results smarter, faster, and easier.

To learn more about the challenges facing the Federal procurement space and how Bidscale software can help, access the full Bidscale White Paper below.

White Paper: Digitizing Federal Procurement