Updates from the procurement innovation front

Regular blog readers will hardly be surprised to learn that I am an advocate for innovation in the procurement system, and in government management in general. This does not reflect a view that all innovations are good things. Some innovations could probably have been predicted not to work in advance (and thus probably never should have been tried). For others, trying the innovation was a justified risk to take, but after the fact we can clearly conclude that it turned out not to work.

Nonetheless, I characterize myself as a cheerleader for innovation for two reasons. One is that if we believe — as I suspect most observers do — there is a performance gap between current government management in general (and procurement management in particular) and the reasonable expectations we should have for good quality government performance, innovations of some sort by definition are necessary to improve. Second, I believe there are enough disincentives to innovation in government to justify putting a thumb on the scale in the direction of general innovation enthusiasm, to counter the anti-innovation bias of current government management.

Continue reading: https://fcw.com/blogs/lectern/2017/02/kelman-acquisition-innovations.aspx?s=fcwdaily_230217