Ellen Lord, undersecretary for acquisition and sustainment at the Defense Department, said at the Special Operations Forces Industry Conference held Thursday that DoD should reform its acquisition process for information technology modernization programs, Federal News Radio reported Friday.
In line with this, Lord said that she and her staff develop acquisition policy “a little bit differently,” adding that they are “allowing the services and research and engineering to pilot authorities, assessing what happened and then writing the policy.”
She also spoke about the establishment of what she called an “agile acquisition framework,” where acquisition authorities are set alongside possible contract vehicles, and successful as well as unsuccessful combinations are documented.
Lord, a 2018 Wash100 recipient, envisioned having the framework replace DoD Directive 5000.01 — the prevailing set of policies governing defense acquisitions.
