Photo By Elizabeth Alber | Scott Stallsmith, Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency (DCSA) senior...... read more read more
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QUANTICO, Va. – DCSA Director William Lietzau signed the agency’s acquisition instruction while opening the DCSA Acquisition Center of Excellence (ACE) at the agency’s first annual ACE Acquisition Workforce Symposium, June 14.
More than 200 DCSA employees – mostly acquisition, contracting, business and finance professionals – joined Lietzau, agency leaders, and a former principal deputy director of National Intelligence at the symposium that was broadcast throughout the nation to employees attending virtually via Adobe Connect.
The acquisition instruction provides “boundaries for acquisition processes in DCSA,” said Lietzau, clarifying that the signing was ceremonious since the instruction would be signed in his office to meet “mission needs on behalf of the United States of America.”
DCSA, in just over 44 months since its establishment, has seen a variety of acquisition challenges. Lietzau recounted how a many of those challenges were overcome successfully as the agency continues to mature its contracting and acquisition workforce practices, processes and policies.
ACE is a community of practice that provides a centralized collaboration and tool repository hub to improve effective, efficient and innovative acquisition outcomes across the enterprise. It is a major step toward resolving some of the acquisition challenges at DCSA. Moreover, ACE will work to design and execute effective and efficient acquisition partnerships with other agencies in the Department of Defense and industry in support of mission success.
“This is about national security,” said DCSA Deputy Director Daniel Lecce regarding the acquisition process and the use of ACE to impact the agency’s programs such as the National Background Investigation Services (NBIS) – the federal government’s one-stop-shop IT system for end-to-end personnel vetting, from initiation and application to background investigation, adjudication and continuous vetting.
“It’s the first time something like this has been done in the federal government – the NBIS end to end system,” said Lecce, who also serves as DCSA’s Component Acquisition Executive (CAE). In that capacity, Lecce provides oversight and review authority for all Acquisition Programs and functions and is responsible for the acquisition workforce management and activities at DCSA. “Think about our mission statement. This is the most important thing that our nation does – national security. It’s what we do and all of us have a critically important role in it every day. We’ve got more to do, we're going to do it, and we can't do it without you.”
DCSA Contracting and Procurement Office (CPO) leaders envision that ACE will help impact the agency’s mission with more “wins” by enabling improved customer and stakeholder engagement, support, repeatable processes, procedures and tools to support operations and decision documentation while providing continuous learning opportunities within the agency.
The ACE learning opportunities began at the symposium, resulting in 2.5 continuous learning points for the agency’s acquisition workforce employees engaged in briefings related to the DOD and DCSA acquisition lexicon, state of the acquisition workforce, acquisition governance, and sessions devoted to acquisition boards (Acquisition Review Board, Service Requirements Review Board, and the Contract and Agreement Review Board).
“As a fairly new agency, we are building and establishing processes while communicating how things get done,” said Scott Stallsmith, DCSA senior procurement executive. “Establishing ACE – this Acquisition Center of Excellence – will go a long way to getting the message out. I envision the ACE to be a place where we're sharing lessons learned, a place where we share best practices and really try to develop what it means to be an acquisition professional here at DCSA.”
In line with the DCSA Strategic Plan for 2022-2027, the establishment of the ACE advances aspects of these strategic goals – Talent, Unity of Effort, Operational Effectiveness, and Resourcing Processes, among others.
“The acquisition system goes not just to contracting,” said Stallsmith. “It goes to the requirements, finances, contracts, program managers and it all culminates into a well-functioning program. In order to do that, events like this - standing up this Acquisition Center of Excellence – will go a long way in helping us mature and grow into that kind of culture we're trying to build here at DCSA.”
The five goals of the ACE are to:
• Establish an integrated working group comprised of key stakeholders in the agency.
• Develop a charter that outlines the ACE purpose and scope.
• Establish a Community of Practice to identify tools and implement best practices across the agency.
• Create recognizable branding that clearly identifies ACE members.
• Work with stakeholders to ensure the required training is available, knowledge is shared across the agency, and opportunities to network are established.
“It's a team sport bringing together different disciplines of program managers, requirement writers, financial analysts, contracting officers, contracting specialists – this will be that focal point, that rallying point to bring us together,” said Stallsmith. “It won’t be a physical office down the hall that you can point out to where the ACE is. It will be a virtual presence with an easy to navigate website with templates and procedures and who to contact.”
In other words, ACE resources and capabilities will connect myriad experts who are proactive, inspired and enabled to collaborate and provide the best acquisition services to support the agency’s mission in each and every DCSA mission area – from personnel vetting, industry engagement, education and counterintelligence to insider threat support as the agency secures the trustworthiness of the U.S. government's workforce, the integrity of its cleared contractor support and the uncompromised nature of its technologies, services and supply chains.
“Do not be daunted by the processes that daunt you,” Susan Gordon, former principal deputy director of National Intelligence, advised the audience in her keynote speech. “Rather be committed to the outcomes you must have and then work the system to be able to get there.”
Gordon – who also served as deputy director of the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency – told inspirational acquisition and contract related success stories spanning three decades of her service as an intelligence officer.
“I’m honored to be here,” she told a packed room of DCSA personnel before recounting policy and military strategies, decisions and lessons learned from the Cold War to the present day while briefing about how to do things, how to lead things, and how to act as an individual based on her personal experiences.
“If you're the person that is given the task to figure out how to do something and you immediately go to requirements - you have just failed the whole organization,” she said, pointing out that President John F. Kennedy gave the nation and NASA a vision in 1961 about landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth by the end of that decade. “The first thing you must do is to envision the outcome you want and you cannot stop thinking about it until you own that outcome in your head.”
| Date Taken: | 07.14.2023 |
| Date Posted: | 07.14.2023 08:25 |
| Story ID: | 449195 |
| Location: | US |
| Web Views: | 243 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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