Ellen Lord, defense undersecretary for acquisition, technology and logistics, has said the Defense Department needs to expedite contract awards by up to 50 percent, DoD News reported Thursday.
“Some of the ways we intend to do this is to incentivizing contractors to submit responsive proposals in 60 days or less and implementing electronic departmentwide streamlining tools,â€Â Lord said at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Thursday.
She said the Pentagon awards approximately 1,800 contracts and 36,000 task and delivery orders on an average daily basis.
DoD has used authorities to accelerate the recruitment of professionals across several areas such as artificial intelligence, engineering, lasers, contracting and robotics, she told lawmakers.
Lord cited AT&L’s efforts to transition the majority of work back to service branches and the need for DoD to advance experimentation and prototyping initiatives.
She also discussed how the National Defense Authorization Acts in the last two years provided DoD new tools and authorities to accelerate the deployment of new capabilities to warfighters and introduce changes to the acquisition system, the report added.
