NSA overhaul includes acquisition

The overhaul of the National Security Agency unveiled last month has been accompanied by a change in thinking about how the agency approaches acquisition.

“We increasingly need to reach out to commercial companies,” many of which are unfamiliar with federal acquisition regulations, said Jennifer Walsmith, NSA’s senior acquisition executive. Those firms have “a different risk/reward calculus. They want high profits; they don’t want you owning their data rights…and they want flexibility.”

NSA will start using an innovative contracting shop to try to make the agency’s acquisition process more efficient, Walsmith said March 9 at a Women in Defense event.

Continue reading: https://fcw.com/articles/2016/03/09/nsa-overhaul-acquisition.aspx