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In this episode we discuss the Federal Government’s initiative, and the Technology Acquisition Center’s actions, to transform Federal acquisition by driving innovation through various tools, training, and more flexible and innovative acquisition practices.
Come for a peek behind the federal acquisition curtain as we gain insights from acquisition professionals at the US Department of Veterans Affairs and dissect varying relevant topics. In this five-episode series we will explore topics such as proposal evaluations, innovation, debriefs, and more!
TAC Talks is premiering Tuesday, September 29th!
The Department of Veterans Affairs does not endorse or officially sanction any entities that may be discussed in this podcast, nor any media, products or services they may provide.
[Music]
Charles Ross (CR): Welcome to the Technology Acquisition Center Podcast, which we affectionately call TAC Talks. Join us as we discuss highly relevant and compelling acquisition topics with highly esteemed industry professionals and attempt to share information with you, the 1102 workforce, program officials and our contractor friends. We hope that you find these topics and discussions helpful. So, turn up the volume on your ear buds and get ready for TAC Talks.
CR: Hello friends and thank you for joining me for another episode of TAC Talks. My name is Chuck Ross, a Service Director at the VA Technology Acquisition Center. We have an exciting discussion for you today that I hope you'll find informative regarding the Department of Veterans Affairs Adoption of Innovative Practices in Acquisition. In 2014, the Federal Government acknowledged that simplifying the Federal Contracting space was critical to driving greater innovation, creativity, and improved performance. Efforts were launched with the goal of improving the economy and efficiency of the Federal acquisition system by increasing opportunities for businesses to participate in the Federal marketplace whereby realizing cost savings and providing the best solution for the taxpayer. The Government sought to illicit feedback from industry, agencies, and state and international governments to identify proposed improvements to the Federal contracting process. They did so through various methods including the first ever Government sponsored open dialogue on Federal procurement. This open dialogue platform centered around three campaigns: reporting and compliance requirements, procurement roles and practices, and participation by small and minority businesses, new entrants, and non-traditional government contractors. It was stated in the Office of Federal Procurement Policy Memorandum titled and I quote, Transforming the Marketplace Simplifying Federal Procurement to Improve Performance, Drive Innovation, and Increase Savings, un quote, that the overwhelming feedback from industry and other stakeholders is that the complexity of the Federal Contracting space leads to higher costs, slower procurements, and less innovation. Stakeholders cited as problems, among other things, one hundred-page requests for proposals with overly prescriptive government unique requirements, significant contract duplication across government, and very little sharing of pricing and other contract information between agencies and industry. Transformation and modernization didn't happen overnight though folks. Oh oh oh no, achieving a more innovative, efficient, and effective acquisition system that supports the needs of a twenty first century government takes initiative, adaptability, buy-in, and the proper tools to implement an actionable plan. To that end, the Government implemented a number of policies and guidance to agencies that identified the actions necessary to address industry concerns and strengthen and improve Federal acquisition practices. During our last episode, we focused on one approach to improve efficiency and achieve greater cost savings by managing spend through Category Management. In this episode, we'll continue to drill down into the Federal Government's initiative to transform Federal acquisition by driving innovation through various tools, training, and more flexibility and innovative acquisition practices. Here with me to discuss this topic are Bob Kirzow and Matt Ginty, who are both Procurement Service Directors at the VA Technology Acquisition Center. As well as Josh Cohen, a Contracting Officer at the VA Technology Acquisition Center. Welcome gentlemen. Bob, let's start with you. You are the TAC's Acquisition Innovation Advocate. What is the purpose of an Innovation Advocate and what initiatives are you involved in to drive innovation at the TAC and across the agency?
Bob Kirzow (BK): Thanks, Chuck. Uh the acquisition Innovation Advocate supports the implementation of new ideas and process improvement. As well as interacts with other agencies to share lessons learned. This is often done through participation on the Acquisition Innovation Advocate Council, which consists of advocates from each agency and meets on a monthly basis. The purpose of those meetings is to broaden awareness and foster cross agency collaboration and innovation. The Council shares the status of their IT related activities and exchanges information with innovation communities regarding successes and challenges. Ah one thing I've noticed since I ah recently cut, ah stepped into this role is something that will likely be commonly discussed today and, is that innovation at the TAC has become part of the norm. Where we are often implementing innovative, innovative strategies. One of the main things we have undertaken over the past few months was developing a mechanism to highlight some of those innovative techniques that increase awareness and hopefully promote further use of those techniques as well as encourage the use of new techniques in future procurements.
CR: Thanks, Bob, one of the government's major initiatives was the establishment of Acquisition Innovation labs within each agency to promote increased collaboration through the use of integrated product teams. Providing a space to test and implement more innovative approaches to acquisition with focus on IT investment. So many of our listeners know that the TAC specializes in IT procurement for the VA enterprise. And as such, has taken steps to set up its own Acquisition Innovation lab within our office space. So Bob, how do you envision this lab being utilized for VA's IT procurements?
BK: Chuck, as you mentioned, one of the main purposes of the lab is to really provide a space and resources to help encourage that innovation. Ah, this will encompass a range of things to include prov-providing access to individuals wherein someone ah with questions or a particular problem can come in and discuss potential innovative courses of action. These individuals could also participate in various IPTs to help guide an acquisition team through the use of innovative approaches. As well as be a useful in ah various scenarios um that are acquisition specific. For example, the lab could also be useful in test running innovative techniques. This test run approach was recently ah successfully implemented on ah an acquisition that we did here at the TAC. It allowed for a completely independent team to come in and act as though they were a company responding to a solicitation challenge. The test run provides an opportunity for the acquisition team to identify areas of the solicitation that may be unclear. Or otherwise lead to responses outside of what would have been anticipated. In other words, it helps identify areas of the solicitation that needs further refinement before being released.
CR: So it is an actual space. There is an actual space that where people go and they, they bring these great ideas together and they work collaboratively on uh, acquisitions and innovative uh techniques. Is that right?
BK: That's correct, and it goes beyond the space as well. It, you know, eh it's uh a general concept as well as to, you know, um promote an innovation so uh and provide an access to various individuals and resources that can help um help the work force, you know, solve the problems that they have.
CR: That's great, so all of this takes a um highly skilled and adaptable workforce in order to execute um. And as mentioned earlier, the government identified the need to provide specialized training to further develop these skills in buying digital services so ah they established the Federal acquisition certification in contracting Core plus specialization in the digital services ah field. So it's a FAC-C-DS certification. The program implemented to support the program implemented to support this specialized certification is called the Digital IT Acquisition Program or (DITAP).
So Matt, can you speak a little bit about the DITAP program and the TAC's efforts toward achieving certification for its staff in this program?
Matt Ginty (MG): Hey sure Chuck, I'd love this to speak about that a little bit, I mean DITAP is a great program. I'm a graduate of it myself. Um, in fact, 93% of TAC's eligible 1102s are actually DITAP graduates, um which is a fantastic number. And um as far as I know, we're one of the leaders uh in the federal space in having uh the most 1102s certified in uh digital services. Which is fantastic because as Bob kind of mentioned here at the TAC, it's becoming more of the norm uh to use innovative uh evaluation techniques as opposed to something that's you know, um, that's not so normal. So, you know, DITAP is great because it, it forms a cohort or cohesive group of people, um that all are trained in the same type of mindset, right? And by having that collaboration we're able to have you know listservs of people and establish those relationships so that if we haven't done something we can go out to this group of people and actually ask for ideas, um maybe bounce something off of them and additionally pay that forward. You know, um give other agencies ideas of innovative things that we're doing so that you know the federal space as a whole we're moving forward uh in innovative evaluation techniques. It's really good because it's moving us from the government from more of that written approach where people are, you know, having good proposal writers and being able to submit a good written volume. But then the boots on the ground are completely different when they get into performance of a contract or task order. Moving to more of the hey, let's do a technical demonstration or a coding challenge to have those people that are actually going to be performing the work actually, you know preparing the proposal or the demonstration so that we see what that actual talent pool looks like.
CR: Great Matt, and I too am a DITAP grad I, I attended one of the early cohorts and I was uh pleasantly surprised to see that a lot of the case studies and a lot of the material in the curriculum were in fact um contracts or situations that were handled at the TAC. Um yeah, I'm sure you found that uh also when you went through the program, which was, was kind of neat. Um so if you're a TAC talk listener and you're in another agency um or even the VA, and you have a tendency to buy IT. The DITAP program is something that you might want to look into, uh because it does have uh a lot of benefits and there is a good cohort of people uh that can think about these things collaboratively. So a little, a little plug there for the DITAP program. So in addition to training, are you aware of any other resources that are out there, um to aid the staff in implementing new and better ways of buying digital services? Uh, and maybe we'll go to Josh for this one.
Josh Cohen (JC): Great, thank you Chuck, um and yes, absolutely there are uh many online resources uh that are available um and I would, I would also plug DITAP to say that's a great start um because it covers so much of the material in one kind of consolidated managed way. Um, but even if you're, you're not a DITAP graduate, um the Tech FAR Hub and the Digital Services Playbook, which I think you've already mentioned, uh are wonderful resources and, and uh a large part of that DITAP uh classwork, um in addition to that, though, and since those documents have been created, eh OMB and a series of agencies from across the government have gotten together um and developed something called the Periodic Table of Acquisition Innovation. Um, it's a dynamic website, um so there's a lot of information on it that covers the entire life cycle of, of the contracting process. Um, it, it highlights a variety of innovative methods that are kind of bunched into um files that are easily uh reviewable shows like pros and cons and high level features um and most importantly provides really great examples that are um from agencies across the government, awarded contracts many of which have held up to litigation um and in many cases provides some of the GAO and process case law um supporting many of those uh methods are really provides um a tool that contracting officers that are looking to solve a problem. You're on an acquisition and someone asked for something that maybe your traditional processes don't necessarily support. Um the, the table provides you know, uh easily digestible uh tool that you can use to solve those problems and very quickly drill down into real examples um and actual language you can use in your solicitation. So, really great resource.
CR: Great, and Josh in um Season One, Episode 4 of TAC Talks. So we're turning back the clock here a little bit, uh Season One Episode 4 we had an in depth discussion focusing on multi-step advisory evaluations, uh so I was wondering if we could um talk more about some actual case studies and specifically how the TAC has adopted more innovative practices within its V-, within its IT acquisitions. So Josh, can you give us some examples of where you have utilized more innovative practices uh since that season one episode?
JC: Absolutely, um one of which I'll say, I think that Matt already kind of gave a plug to earlier, um which is the, the kind of widespread use of, I guess what we would call show me don't tell me type evaluations um which were also used for, for, uh the multi-step Advisory example we talked about last year. Um, but we've expand, I think there's been an expansion of, of how that particular model has been used. So obviously the project I think we started using on were more Agile software development, um open source type technologies. Um we've now expanded that into like product demos. And using it on efforts were looking for maybe a commercial solution and we want to see that commercial solution and, and evaluate it that way as opposed to perhaps what may have been really done in a written proposal in the past, um, and the same would go for like research and design services. So even within the agile um framework, if you weren't necessarily looking for software development per se, and you were just doing discovery sprints and research work, we've come up with, we've seen those types of evaluation techniques. We pointed at that kind of a process, so that's been kind of exciting to see that that grow. I think another area would be kind of streamlining award decisions, specifically on like IDIQ contracts like uh T4 or CEDAR or some of the um the even agency or Government wide GWAC that we use um to streamline the award decision just even as a matter of just the documentation itself and shortening the documents and then seeing how we can streamline and move away from more FAR Part 15 source selection procedures and towards some of the more innovative and modern techniques. So it's been really exciting to see that build over time here at the TAC and I look forward to seeing kind of how that that continues to grow as we move forward.
CR: Great, uh thanks Josh. And you know our implementation of more innovative practices has led these case studies to be published and shared in the tech FAR Hub as examples to other agencies. Um and I know that even TAC Talks, we get a lot of uh listeners from other agencies, and it affords us the opportunity they'll reach out to uh subject matter experts like Josh and Matt and Bob, and it affords us the opportunity to collaborate and train other agencies on how to implement some of these practices. So, so Matt, can you provide any examples where we've collaborated with some of these other agencies?
MG: Yeah, sure Chuck. I mean, I think you know we've done it on several different occasions. Um we've asked DHS um several times for some help with some things to learn. Some of the things that they're actually doing in the innovation space. But most notably, I think you know we do like to pay it forward, right. So, we did have one situation I can think of that we did US Transportation Command, TRANSCOM, from Department of Defense found out about the T4 Next Gen vehicle and were beginning this process of updating their software systems um for logistics purposes and they came to us and asked, you know, hey, listen, you know we, we see that you've done some agile delivery. We know VA is doing this, um you know. Have you had success? And of course we have had great success with the methods we're using uh so they asked, you know, hey listen we're interested in using the vehicle. Um doing a direct order, but we really want to learn about how you're actually structuring your task orders uh for agile delivery so, you know, we said sure, come on up. So they came up um for a full day, they brought their, a couple of PMs and their contracting people, and we sat around. Basically, you know, sort of and it wasn't very formal but a round table format um and kind of just threw out there, gave them some examples of, of how we buy scrum teams and T shirt sizes for agile development, and you know kind of walked them through like the minimum viable product idea. Um, paying for software, like code delivery as opposed to, you know, your, your standard what the Government's used to of, you know, heavy on the deliverables and paying for those large documents, but you're maybe not really getting that good, good developed code. So we walked them through all those types of scenarios um, and basically sent them away with those examples and they actually wound up taking those examples and incorporating them into their requirements and using them uh for a direct order on T4 Next Gen, which is going very well so far. Um you know, one of the other things we kind of stressed to them as well as you know, with agile development, you need the ability to be flexible, right? So how do you structure your contract to be flexible and we kind of do that through the use of um you know, optional tasks. And the optional tasks in this case allow for, you know, let's say, legislation change comes down, right. The, the requiring activity has no control over that. They're not making the decision to say, well, you know I didn't know about that two years ago. You know this was something that came down from um, you know, Congress or something like that, and they have to incorporate these changes into their program so, you know, easily done with an optional task as opposed to, you know, having to do a change order, which is going to be, could be costly and time Consuming, um you know they can quickly pivot with those optional tasks uh to get a scrum team or another development Sprint uh working on those things.
CR: No, that, that is interesting and actually um, just to expound upon that a little bit prior to taking DITAP training, I had always thought that these agile scrum teams and agile ways of contracting kind, and being flexible, directly related to you know cost increases, change in scope, things like that as the program matured. But there are ways of, of containing and putting some guardrails, to ensure that there's cost controls. Do you just want to elaborate a little bit on that? Um you know while these are very flexible in nature, there is some rigor to ensuring that, um you know, we're, we're not allowing costs to just uh, get out of control, right, Matt?
MG: Yeah, that's right, Chuck. I mean, that's a, a great observation because you know, you have to, it's not a free for all, right? I mean, that's the one thing we should probably get across to everybody listening is that it's not just uh an open book or an open checkbook. You know, there are limitations surrounding that. And I think a lot of that comes from structuring requirements in a manner that is flexible, but obviously sets those parameters, like how many scrum teams you're buying, how many T shirt sizes there are. You know, we don't want to dictate to a contractor, ever you know, what does that team look like? But we may dictate you know, that we know it, it takes a certain number of people. Probably you tell us the appropriate skill sets you want, or that you think would be necessary to accomplish this work based on um a backlog. Let's say that we have that's serving as an example, basically, right that backlog can change because that's what agile is about, but at least those constraints are in there. And then we also put the constraint in there like I said, we're only going to pay for software delivery. We may ask for scrum teams in the performance work statement or a SOO, but what we want is before a COR or PM signs off on that, is you know a build acceptance form, right? Just a very standard thing that says, hey, we agreed to the definition of done at the beginning of this Sprint. Did we meet that definition of done? And if they did, then we pay. If not, then we have to go back to the drawing board.
CR: Ah that's great. That's good, good information. So you know as we adopt more of these innovative practices you would, you would expect to see greater benefits and outcomes with within the procurements that we're doing um, so going beyond uh the obvious benefits of improved efficiency and cost savings, we would also expect to see things such as um access to more innovative companies, uh getting more advanced technologies, increased opportunities for small business, um maybe better alignment with private sector practices and how we're doing some of these acquisitions. So, uh Josh can you talk a little bit about the benefits that you've seen and employing more innovative methods um both during requirements development and evaluation. Um and how those methods may, you know, be benefiting the VA post award uh with respect to performance.
JC: Absolutely, and, and certainly this is really where the rubber meets the road of course. Um you know innovation is great and it's there to solve problems, but it you know it's only worth repeating if it solves that problem, and otherwise we should, we should shift, so. I guess I'd start off by saying the first uh maybe thing we were successful in is, is, is failing a few times in iterating um, and, and managing to um kind a learn as we went and, and that's been really important as, as we went along. Um, I think the uh in terms of some of the items you, you mentioned and, and um where we've seen this really um be, best applied and, and my work with would be the VA.gov slash (inaudible) which originated as the vets.gov um website, which is now expanded even into something that we refer to as the Veteran Services Platform. Um, that is really the um main Veteran facing uh platform for, for VA at the moment um and we used a lot of the techniques across several different um companies, things that we've highlighted on against some examples of what you can find on the Acquisition Periodic Table of Innovation we were mentioning before. Um, and, and as that work as we've used those techniques, we've seen uh both an increase as you mentioned in smaller, more innovative companies. Um I won't say that all, all of them have gone to companies that are new to the market, but certainly a, a number of them have um and even in other cases, there's been a significant amount of subcontracting work with companies that are fairly new to this space. So, um I, I definitely think that if, if your goal is to attract a smaller, more innovative, just different kind of, of company um you know, working with them to develop acquisition strategies that they feel they understand and that best highlight their work, why you want to go to them in the first place is, is been, is very important as certainly been something we've seen work, work for us. Another fairly innovative thing I think we've tried on some of them that's worked well has been follow-up interviews. So, especially when we're doing something for the first time maybe a different kind of demonstration that we're doing or different type of acquisition strategy um we'll, we'll circle back with, with the vendors. Even the losing vendors sometimes, most importantly the losing vendors. Um, to ask them some basic questions about the experience and how effective they felt the evaluation strategy was and what they would have done differently. I, I don't think something that we necessarily ever thought to do in the past, but that's shown some really interesting um things uh and allowed us to kind of iterate and, and uh, you know, do better on some of the future ones, learning from some of those the comments we got from industry. And, and I think most, most importantly uh to the main point of your question, the Veteran Service Platform itself, I, I think has been um very successful. And ah you know, obviously, that's from, from a lot of different reasons and a huge effort by a variety of different teams across the VA and really even across the government in some respects. Um but, but I think the contracts have definitely been an important part of that and have supported the success. Just to give a couple of highlights. Um, and these are even a few years old from the Veterans Service Platform. They've, they've done 1,300 custom events, they've moved over 5,000 pages of documentation that have all been rearchitected using modern, um, techniques and, and modern content guidelines, um they've reduc-reduced load time, they increased the up time efficiencies with the website. Um, and are really achieving daily code deploys. Which I think is something when um, the idea of agile was first brought in or DEVOPS where there is almost continuous delivery of code it is not something that happens quarterly it's something that happens every day. They're achieving that every day on that platform across the variety of applications and that's really powerful and again I think a testament to having gotten some of the contractors that understand that, that work and, and how to do it successfully so it's gone really well and I'm excited to see where it goes in the future.
CR: Right. So, we've heard a lot of success stories we've, and we we've heard, um a lot of great case studies of things that have worked and brought much value to the VA. Ah, through innovative techniques but I mean surely that hasn't come without some, some growing pains and challenges along the way. So, can, can you just share maybe some lessons learned or you know how that sausage was made there behind the scenes? That got us to the point of having ah, some of the success, Josh?
JC: Absolutely, um, and so much so that it could probably be the subject of its own podcast or a series of podcasts. Um, though, um, definitely uh something we, we've gotten better at as we went along, um, and I think that's fundamental to kind of the idea of why you want agile development in the first place is because you would want to iterate in kind of that fail fast mentality. So, we try to take that same approach with this work and with some of the techniques. Ah, and luckily, we have been able to partner with customers who are um, you know also willing and, and asking us to do work a little differently and you know understand some of the risks involved with that. Which maybe lists lends to the first lesson, I'll say which is that using a customer experience-based development model where you are doing a lot of research and letting that drive uh design decisions and just agile in general requires a lot of buy-in from the agency itself. It's, it's not a matter of just bringing in a contractor that knows how to do it. You need to make sure you have access to users, and stakeholders and decision makers. Um, that, that they are signed up to make those decisions and commitments in a timeframe that, that supports agile delivery. And that you're not going to race to sit for three weeks while you wait for someone to make a decision. That would normally break this model um, and it's making sure that we've asked a lot of those questions up front and that the teams within VA that want to deliver that way talk to their stakeholders and business customers um, and have some kind of common understanding what that looks like. So, I think that's, that's, the first lesson we learned the hard way perhaps, was that if you haven't done that, um, you will, you will have problems. If decision makers you know aren't in place, and then decisions won't get made. I would say another lesson would be to start small. Um, we didn't do this on a massive scale at first. It was done on a couple of discrete and small applications um, which allowed us to, um you know, really, really try some different things but, but, obviously kind of boundary it and not have it take down the ship um and be able to iterate it a few times before we tried it at scale. Um, I think another lesson just, and, it's less a technique but more just a mentality to take with these things is I think it's often common to just look at a problem and say oh, they're missing this really obvious thing in FAR part 16 something that you know, we you know, we're way smarter than them and will come in here and just, just, do that, right. The assumption is probably wrong. Most likely someone, someone smart already tried that and, and you, you probably should start off by asking the history of why we're in this and where the problems have been in the past. I think before you just go in and start, you know, slamming a process on somebody, because sometimes there's change management issues and stuff that, that have to be uncovered and dealt with upfront, and that's been another ah important lesson. And the other one is just set expectations with the customer that, as I mentioned, these things are new and you're going to make mistakes. Things are going to go well and some things aren't and it, and sometimes that, that means it's going to take a little longer or it's going to take a little more effort and it just you know, making sure that you're, you're upfront and honest and there's transparency and a commitment to work uh you know as hard as possible with, with both sides. Um and if that's in place, I you know, we've been very successful with these models. Um, and again, I, I think to Matt maybe to follow, finalize that to Matt's point about cross agency collaboration. If you're trying this for the first time, there is no need to reinvent the wheel. In many of these considerations you are going to have all these questions, I mean, there's a lot of resources out there. There's a lot of agencies that are willing to, ours included, provide advice, and share lessons learned and share examples. The Periodic Table is full of that and is really a reflection of, of the culture in this space. Um, and, and it's a great resource so.
CR: Thanks, Josh. Uh, now I'd like to turn uh to Bob. The TAC's method of past performance utilized for the T4NG contract is considered best in class. As the VA, it was important to include an evaluation criteria specifically focused on Veteran's employment. Bob, can you share a little bit about both of these?
RK: Sure. As you mentioned Chuck, uh the TAC's method of past performance uh evaluation under T4NG was actually recently highlighted by OMB in their Procurement Acquisition Lead Time, otherwise known as PALT Memorandum, as an example of a performance evaluation modernization strategy um, used to reduce PALT. Uh, what the TAC does is it documents T4NG contractors' past performance by calculating a combined numerical score for monthly Quality Assurance Surveillance Plans, the Veterans employment utilization, and small business performance. The use of the Quality Assurance Surveillance Plan methodology reduces the time required to evaluate past performance to minutes instead of hours or days and has contributed to the VA's ability to make competitive multi-million-dollar awards in under 45 days using the fair opportunity procedures in FAR 16.5. Um, as mentioned the Veterans employment aspect of past performance serves as a mechanism to encourage the T4NG primes to hire Veterans. And as a result, the T4NG primes employ more than 36,000 Veterans currently, which represents an increase of more than 20,000 from when T4NG contracts were initially awarded about five years ago.
CR: Well, that's impressive. An increase of 20, 20,000 Veterans you say, ah from when they were initially brought on board, that is, that is great. Um, so, Bob, I know you and I have talked about this previously and, and that we shouldn't innovate just for the sake of, of being innovative, but it should serve a purpose and, and improve a process or solve a problem. So, what do you see the future of, of acquisition innovation? And you know, what might be the next area of innovation?
RK: Yeah, Chuck, uh you know I, think one of the things is going to be continuing to focus on this show me versus the tell me type of approach as far as uh proposal evaluations. I, I, think um, not only the TAC but the federal government as a whole is probably seeing some pretty um, good results as, as a result of those approaches. So, I could see, I could see that continuing to expand and grow into either wider uses of those techniques or, or um, branching off and into new techniques as well. Um, additionally, I think one of the other areas that's getting a lot of attention recently, and I think it's going to be a trend moving forward is, looking at uh things such as robotic process automation and intelligent automation technologies which will help to transform, some of the acquisition processes that we use.
CR: That's great, and I think that brings us to the conclusion of this uh, episode of TAC talks. And I hope our listeners out there enjoyed this episode titled Adopting Innovative Practices in Acquisition. And I specifically want to thank Bob and Matt and Josh for participating in this panel. I, I hope our listeners found it as informative and interesting as I did. So, thank you, gentlemen.
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CR: As always, we must remind you the Department of Veteran's Affairs does not endorse or officially sanction any entities that may be discussed in this podcast, nor any media, products, or services that they may be providing. We thank you for listening to this episode of TAC Talks and hope you found it helpful as well as enjoyable. You may direct any questions or feedback to me, Chuck Ross at charles.ross@va.gov. And remember, if you are passionate about government acquisition, are a continuous learner and enjoy fruitful dialogue then keep tuning into TAC Talks.
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