Describe OMB Memorandum M-19-13: Making Smarter Use of Common Contract Solutions and Practices of 2019
On March 20, 2019, the Office of Management and Budget Director published Memorandum M-19-13.
The purpose of the Memorandum is to provide guidance on the "practice of buying common goods and services as an enterprise to eliminate redundancies, increase efficiency, and deliver more value and savings from the Government's acquisition programs."
Throughout over a decade, the OMB, GSA, DOD, DHS, Federal CIO, and other parties have emphasized in their publications the need to eliminate duplicate IT spending, especially in the area of acquisition.
This memorandum provides specific details as to how to do so.
Maintaining contract and acquisition compliance
The memorandum notes:
“Each year, the Federal Government spends hundreds of billions of dollars–over $325 billion in FY 2018–for common goods and services, such as software, mobile devices and professional services.”
As you may recall, prior articles within this learning module noted that number was $80 billion. This number has increased exponentially in over a decade.
Focusing the acquisition workforce
The memorandum also notes:
“The lack of mechanisms to support agency collaboration on common contract solutions has resulted in billions of dollars in lost cost avoidance, inappropriate contract duplication, and missed opportunities to adopt Government and industry best practices. These missteps have also unnecessarily added to the workload of the acquisition workforce, whose talents and time could produce greater return if they could focus more on mission critical acquisitions.”
The Acquisition Workforce is a large population within the Federal Government. Because of its size, the OMB notes that there has been duplicate contracting efforts and costs.
Guidance on remediation
The memorandum establishes five key steps that the OMB expects each agency to undertake in order to maintain their contract and acquisition compliance. For each step, it then provides specific actions on how to do so.
- Annually establish plans to reduce unaligned spend and increase the use of best in class (BIC) solutions for common goods and services, consistent with small business and other statutory socioeconomic responsibilities;
- Develop effective vendor management strategies to improve communications with contractors, especially those that support mission-critical functions;
- Implement demand management strategies to eliminate inefficient purchasing and consumption behaviors;
- Share data across the Federal Government to differentiate quality and value of products and services in making buying decisions; and
- Train and develop the workforce in category management principles and practices.
Importance
Just as the DoD realized that costs may be reduced and efficiencies may be gained by consolidating contract vehicles, the OMB expects that Agencies too will become more laser-focused on purchasing and consumption behaviors, and share information to improve acquisition.
Also, the Memorandum recognizes, just like the DoD’s Modernization Strategy, that the Federal workforce as a whole needs more training and development on the cloud and acquisition management.