User:Marendt/sandbox

Challenge-based acquisition (ChBA) is the use of challenges (insert link) as part of the Government acquisition process. ChBA creates an efficient division of labor where the government focuses on what it needs (i.e., demand) to achieve its mission and private industry focuses on solutions (i.e., supply). The government could use ChBA to communicate its needs by framing challenges that are analogous or identical to the desired capability. Industry could then respond to the challenges without being confined by extraneous constraints such as highly detailed engineering specifications.

To meet government needs, the challenges must be transparent and understandable. If possible, the government should make the challenge accessible to all parties wishing to address the stated needs. Concrete challenges can permit nuanced levels of control in acquisition not possible with static specifications alone.

A challenge is a thing imbued with a sense of difficulty and victory. It encourages discovery or development of unprecedented capability. Challenges are most frequently used to draw attention to excellence, spur market development, or encourage industry networking.

Challenge-based acquisition takes the government-endorsed challenge concept4 a step further by making it part of the procurement process. It brings the innovation opportunity of a challenge into the procurement framework of the FAR. Challenge-based acquisition incorporates innovation, free thinking, and efficiencies that result from Government challenges and does so under the umbrella of the federal acquisition process. This allows the Government to use challenges as the core of its evaluations, pay vendors for participation, and most importantly, test and purchase quantities beyond simply prototypes. It is a mechanism to:

 * Communicate needed capability, * Encourage innovation in a minimally prescriptive environment, * Assess candidate offerings, and * Purchase proven solutions.

Challenge-based acquisition is based on the proposition that acquisitions are best performed if the thing to be acquired is presented as a need (the challenge) and potential providers are free to propose innovative solutions that fill the need.

Under appropriate circumstances, the FAR encourages approaches like challenge-based acquisition: “…absence of direction should be interpreted as permitting the Team to innovate and use sound business judgment that is otherwise consistent with law and within the limits of their authority. Contracting officers should take the lead in encouraging business process innovations and ensuring that business decisions are sound…”

Challenge-based acquisition fits best in situations where the need is urgent and time-critical, where no traditional solution seems viable, or where emerging technologies have the potential for providing non-traditional solutions. It does not fit well with large, multi-year major system acquisitions. However, within these types of programs, challenge-based acquisition may have a role in the acquisition of sub-systems or components.

A number of acquisition strategies are available for challenge-based acquisitions. The choice of strategy depends on circumstances — acquisition objectives, available time, complexity, technology ambiguity, challenger pool size, and acquisition scope. Some choices include multiple award Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) for evaluation and procurement, Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) for technology creation then competitive procurement, and BAA exclusively for Intellectual Property creation. In all cases, using the guidelines for pool creation, followed by successive evaluation cycles, should lead to a successful procurement that adheres to all government regulations.