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18F and TTS Office of Acquisition award first assisted acquisition
on December 17, 2020
The Administration for Children & Families’ Office of Family Assistance, TTS, and the vendor community worked together to improve the TANF Data Reporting System (TDRS) to make it easier and faster for States, Tribes, and Territories to support low income families
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Prerequisites for modular contracting
on February 28, 2019
At 18F, we often advocate for modular contracting — the practice of breaking up large, custom software procurements into a small constellation of smaller contracts. In doing so, we’ve learned that we’re more effective when promoting that message to people who are familiar with the fundamentals of modern software development practices.
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Am I doing this right?: Antipatterns in agile contracting
on September 27, 2018
As agencies try to adopt agile development practices and modular contracting methods, there are several anti-patterns that we have noticed through the course of our work. We address how these can hinder success and alternatives to consider.
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How login.gov used evidence-based buying to find identity proofing software
on August 7, 2018
As part of our work building login.gov, a single sign on service for government, we’ve been looking at ways to effectively verify people’s identity online. Not only did we need to find a technology solution to meet this need, we need to find a solution in a stack of brand new possibilities.
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What we learned from building a pool of agile vendors
on July 26, 2018
In 2015, 18F had an idea for a better way for federal agencies to hire private vendors to build products and services using agile development techniques. We wanted to see what would happen if we used an existing government process (called a blanket purchase agreement) and tailored it to the needs of agencies looking to update their digital services.
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Five contracting tweaks that have yielded 18F better procurements (thus far)
on July 17, 2018
Here are five procurement hacks — both in the context of our Agile Blanket Purchase Agreement (BPA) and in general — that we’ve made in the past few years to make the procurement process a bit more joyful and effective.
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Using agile methods to improve the RFP process
on May 22, 2018
The process of developing and issuing RFPs is often viewed as a one off - a special activity that occurs infrequently and in isolation. What if we applied the principles of iteration and continuous improvement to the way that RFPs are developed?
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Improving government outcomes through an agile contract format
on November 30, 2017
The way government is writing contracts is wasting time, handcuffing industry, and preventing programs from meeting mission mandates. There’s a better way through an Agile Contract Format.
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Pulling back the curtain on IT procurement
on October 11, 2017
Monolithic procurement — large, complex, multi-year contracts, which are common in government IT procurement — can appear compelling to agencies that use them. The Technology Transformation Services (TTS) is a strong advocate for an alternative approach known as modular contracting (aka modular procurement).
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A day in the life of an 18F product owner
on September 18, 2017
The Technology Transformation Services (TTS) has been working with the Forest Service in an effort to move their permitting process online. We’ve previously written about how doing this work in the open can benefit other agencies with permit systems. In this post, we’ll focus on why it’s important to have a product owner, what that looks like from the Forest Service’s perspective, and why a product owner is critical to successful projects.
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Forest Service: Six months in, checking our assumptions
on September 8, 2017
The Technology Transformation Services has been working with the Forest Service in an effort to move their permitting process online. In this post, we’ll focus on how taking a step back to check your assumptions can reduce the risk that your project will go off course.
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What makes a great vendor team for acquisition product development?
on August 30, 2017
From our experience with the Agile Blanket Purchase Agreement (BPA), we’ve found that in order to build effective cross-functional teams and successful IT projects, we need alignment on several principles
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Why discovery research matters for modular procurement
on June 22, 2017
The Technology Transformation Service (TTS) has been working with the Forest Service since August 2016 on what will eventually be an agency-wide system to process permit applications. TTS is primarily helping the Forest Service hire private vendors for this work, rather than building it ourselves, and one way we’re improving that process is through “discovery research.”
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Remembering Larry Mathias, an early partner and excellent civil servant
on April 27, 2017
We’re writing this to remember and pay tribute to Larry Mathias, who passed away unexpectedly this month. Larry was a senior contracting officer at the General Services Administration. He managed technology systems for the OASIS program and was instrumental in helping GSA launch this new contract vehicle. Larry was also an early believer in 18F.
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Leadership and innovation at California's Child Welfare Services
on November 17, 2016
This is the story of how the State of California changed direction on a $500 million IT project for Child Welfare Services. To a large degree it’s about technology. But it‘s also about leadership, changing frames for assessing risk, and relationships based on trust.
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Modular procurement resources for state and local government
on November 15, 2016
Our recent work with state government agencies in California and Mississippi provides some powerful examples of how 18F’s commitment to working and learning in the open can provide enormous benefits — even to states that are not yet working directly with 18F.
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California takes a new approach to procurement
on October 28, 2016
The Technology Transformation Service recently held an industry day to talk to the private sector community about our vision, our projects, and how GSA and vendors can work together to bring modern digital services to the federal government. For that event, California’s Stuart Drown recorded a short video talking about 18F’s work with California on their Child Welfare System.
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Announcing the Digital Acquisition Accelerator Playbook
on October 12, 2016
Built on the lessons learned during the pilot phase of the Digital Acquisitions Accelerator, the accompanying playbook examines the current acquisition landscape and provides an approach to procuring custom software solutions. Our goal is to make the government a smarter and more informed buyer of digital products and services.
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Using RFPs to make every dollar count
on October 3, 2016
We were thrilled to be invited to help National Endowment for the Arts and even more thrilled that we could help them succeed in a way that prevented years of back-and-forth exchanges and many millions of dollars spent. Instead, they invested $30,000 and a couple months to build the Bright Spots interactive graphic.
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Mississippi brings agile and modular techniques to child welfare system contract
on September 20, 2016
The State of Mississippi is about to upgrade its child welfare management system, a system used by about 1,800 state employees in 82 counties, supporting the wellbeing of about 5,000 children across the state. The system was built in the early 2000s, and the employees who use it are stymied by an inefficient interface and aging infrastructure.
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Buying better digital products part 3: Mapping user stories
on August 4, 2016
The Digital Acquisition Accelerator, a program run by the Presidential Innovation Fellows and 18F, launched in early June. Through this program, cross-functional teams from two agencies — the U.S. Department of the Treasury and the Federal Bureau of Investigation — are learning to build two products each using modern product management practices. During week two of the Accelerator, the teams applied what they learned in an inception workshop. This is the third in a series of three blog posts that describe the step-by-step process of the workshop.
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Buying better digital products part 2: Setting the product vision and strategy
on July 26, 2016
This is the second in a series of three blog posts that provide a step-by-step guide to how we led the inception workshop.
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Buying better digital products part 1: Proto-personas and understanding the problem
on July 21, 2016
Recently, 18F launched the Digital Acquisition Accelerator, a 6-8 month program aimed at creating change agents within two agencies to inspire a cultural shift within those agencies. This is the first in a series of three blog posts that provide a step-by-step guide to how we led the inception workshop.
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3 ways for digital acquisition teams to work better
on July 13, 2016
As we work through this pilot phase of the Digital Acquisition Accelerator, we’ll be sharing our work and the lessons we learn. We hope this will help other interested teams follow along and also give the public on opportunity to give us feedback on our pilot. Here are three techniques that our team practiced with the FBI and Treasury teams during the recent kickoff of the pilot.
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Using plain language to bridge the gap between government and industry
on June 21, 2016
Recently, we partnered with the Office of Integrated Technology Services (ITS) here within the General Services Administration (GSA) on a four-month effort to develop a plain language guide, informed by research and interviews, to help technology companies interested in doing business with the federal government better understand how to join IT Schedule 70.
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Two agencies participating in the Digital Acquisition Accelerator pilot
on June 15, 2016
Today, we’re thrilled to announce that the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Department of the Treasury are the first two agencies to participate in the Digital Acquisition Accelerator Pilot.
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From spreadsheet to API to app: A better contract forecasting tool
on May 2, 2016
Executive branch agencies of the federal government are required by law to tell vendors if and when they plan on making purchases. The General Services Administration (GSA) was forecasting using a crowded spreadsheet containing dozens of columns and hundreds of rows. 18F helped create a new, open-source tool to display contract forecasting opportunities.
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How and why we built the micro-purchase bidding platform
on February 19, 2016
This past December, 18F launched a micro-purchase platform to enable vendors to place bids on opportunities to deliver open source code that costs $3,500 or less. This is a look at how and why we built this platform.
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Micro-purchase auctions round 2: What we learned
on January 15, 2016
The auctions have closed, the bids are in, the winners are off coding, and some already have been paid. Let’s look at some early lessons from our latest round of micro-purchase auctions.
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Announcing the 18F Micro-purchase Platform
on January 7, 2016
In October 2015, 18F launched an experiment in micro-purchasing. Given both vendor and government interest in continuing this task, 18F is happy to announce the launch of a new platform for posting and bidding on micro-purchase tasks.
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The current future of 18F marketplaces
on November 18, 2015
In August, we announced the Full-stack Development Pool vendors for the Agile Delivery Services Marketplace. As we continue to work on the alpha version of this marketplace, we're beginning to plan out additional micro-markets as well.
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How the City of Boston is using GSA’s CALC tool
on November 10, 2015
We hoped CALC, a powerful labor category and pricing research tool from GSA and 18F, would save federal contracting officers time and money. Turns out, it’s also saving cities time and money. In August, we found out the City of Boston has been using CALC to vet pricing they receive in response to a request for proposals.
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Early lessons from the micro-purchase experiment
on November 6, 2015
Well, we sure didn’t expect this. But the winning bid for the first iteration of the 18F micro-purchase experiment was $1. And on Wednesday, the winner delivered a solution that passed our acceptance criteria.
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Announcing the criteria for 18F's first micro-purchase contract
on October 26, 2015
Today, we're beginning our micro-purchase experiment. Here are the details of what we are looking for and our acceptance criteria for the final submission.
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Open Source Micro-purchasing: An experiment in federal acquisition
on October 13, 2015
In the next few weeks, we're going to use our micro-purchase authority to run an experiment to contract for open source contributions to our active projects.
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Announcing the Agile BPA awards: A conversation about the process
on August 28, 2015
As the first Agile BPA awards are now being issued, we asked three members of the team about the process and the lessons they’ve learned so far.
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Communicart tool will streamline purchase card process
on August 6, 2015
Our hope is that our new Communicart tool will streamline the purchase card approval process so government employees can spend more time performing their essential work and less time on the paperwork required to buy a new chair.
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Announcing the CALC tool: Making pricing research easier in federal procurement
on May 12, 2015
Today, 18F and the General Services Administration (GSA) launched a powerful new labor category and pricing research tool to help the federal contracting community make smarter, faster buying decisions.
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New RFP ghostwriting service to improve contract success
on March 30, 2015
A poorly written RFP will expose you to such risks as overbidding to compensate for uncertainty, vendor lock-in, and catastrophic failure due to miscommunication and misunderstanding. You don’t want that. The taxpaying public doesn’t want that. And neither does 18F.
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Labor category descriptions for agile procurements
on March 10, 2015
Clients of 18F Consulting frequently ask for help defining labor categories for agile contracts. We’ve published these definitions in a public GitHub repo so other acquisition professionals can benefit from them, too. Read on for more details.
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UX lessons learned from a procurement project
on March 6, 2015
UX designer Nick Brethauer talks about how user research better informs the products 18F builds.
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Making procurement easier: questions for developer Kaitlin Devine
on March 5, 2015
We recently sat down with Developer Kaitlin Devine and asked her a few questions about Discovery, a new product designed to make government procurement more efficient.
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Announcing OASIS Discovery: making market research easier
on March 4, 2015
18F is glad to announce the beta release of a new procurement tool, Discovery. Discovery will allow federal acquisition personnel to conduct initial market research more easily and quickly - allowing users to discover and research vendors offering work across a number of professional service categories.
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Creating a federal marketplace for agile delivery services
on January 8, 2015
The federal government and industry community have been talking about the need for software acquisitions to keep pace with technology cycles — typically 1-3 years. In today’s dynamic environment, however, not even that is fast enough.
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With FBOpen API, 18F shows what's possible in government
on May 11, 2014
There has been some great coverage of the new group of tech specialists out of the GSA, dubbed 18F.
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Announcing FBOpen: Government opportunities made easier
on March 31, 2014
Today we're announcing our first product launch: FBOpen, a set of open-source tools to help small businesses search for opportunities to work with the U.S. government.
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