Nearly a year after a major reorganization, the Defense Information Systems Agency still is making some tweaks to its operations, and that includes a hard look at how it contracts for certain services that can serve numerous portfolios.
Contract consolidation was a major theme at DISA's annual Forecast to Industry, held Nov. 2 in Washington, D.C., where senior leadership outlined plans for trimming overhead spending and becoming a leaner organization by combining how it buys some services.
DISA operates a range of portfolios, most of which fall under the Development and Business Center or the Implementation and Sustainment Center, which were both set up in January as central parts of the reorganization. Currently many of those portfolios, and even those at DISA's other Defense Department customers, administer separate contracts for the same services, such as – think program management or systems analysis. Those are services that can apply the same skills and expertise to many different programs and projects, and that's where DISA officials are hoping to find a streamlined sweet spot.
"We have an absolute necessity to streamline our business processes and reduce overhead," said Maj Gen Sarah Zabel, DISA vice director. "This is a constant balance. I've seen instances where we've chosen to disaggregate larger contracts to ensure small business was able to compete; I've seen other times where we've taken actions to put [contracts] together into a larger competition in order to reduce overhead passed onto customers. It's constantly being managed."
Overhead costs is a major driver in the move toward contract consolidation, but officials cautioned that it's not something they are taking lightly in the search for more efficiencies.
"I'm trying to reduce costs. A significant portion of our rates is tied to overhead, and overhead is directly tied to time, materials, people, etc.cetera, putting contracts in place and managing them. The more I can consolidate and become efficient and effective, the better off I am in terms of responsiveness, the capability I provide, as well as reducing my costs to maintain and provide that capability," said Dave Bennett, director of the DISA's Implementation and Sustainment Center. "But it's consolidating where it makes sense. We're not really consolidating based on types of contracts, whether it's small business or large business for example."
Engineering is a prime example, Bennett said. He pointed out that across its numerous programs and portfolio, DISA probably has somewhere in the range of 200 contracts supporting engineering capabilities. That's exactly the kind of overlap DISA officials are targeting in the consolidation process, which will use both small business and larger vendors.
"When you look at them you really start to ask, 'do I really need 200 contracts focused on engineering, when somebody wrote the same objectives and just used one or two keywords to distinguish it from something else?'" Bennett said. "So that's really where the focus is: – consolidating the need and leveraging small business or large business as appropriate to get to what that solution is."
While small businesses often suffer when contracts are consolidated, the DISA officials insisted it's more an issue of a function or service itself than the size of the vendor providing that function.
"Where I have common capabilities that cross multiple portfolios, and therefore, I have multiple contracts because of how they evolved, I'm going to consolidate," said Alfred Rivera, director of the Development and Business Center. "I want it to be functionalized so I can get economies where it makes sense. So I've asked [my teams] to look at areas that are across the whole portfolio of programs to see where we get expertise…those areas that everyone can take advantage of and get economies of scale."
Overall, the goal is to continue to promote small business as DISA has in the past; the agency "has done a phenomenal job" of reaching small business goals over the years, and will continue to strive to do so, said Doug Packard, director of DISA's procurement directorate.
MORE: See our complete DISA Forecast to Industry Show Reporter.
