Emerging Policy and Practice Issues (2016)

This paper, presented at the West Government Contracts Year in Review Conference (covering 2015), attempts to identify the key trends and issues in U.S. federal procurement. Consistent with prior practice, this chapter offers extensive coverage of the federal procurement, grant, and defense spending trends and attempts to predict what lies ahead, particularly with regard to legislative and executive activity. The paper discusses, in addition to the macro-level data, initiatives from OFPP and DoD, including the Better Buying Power 3.0\u27s less-than-obvious focus on innovation, the need for investment in research and development, information technology and category management, acquisition performance measurement (or metrics), and cost drivers