Track 5: Breakthroughs and Best Practices (BB)

Session BB-4: Government Contracting: A NASA Case Study on Achieving Efficiency, Effectiveness and Overall Value for Taxpayers

03/24/2010

2:00 PM - 3:00 PM

Prerequisite: None

Terry D. Jackson

The President’s Memorandum on Government Contracting mandates agencies to eliminate waste and inefficiency from government contracting and achieve savings and performance improvements for our citizens. To meet these objectives, NASA’s Office of the Chief Information Officer (CIO) has implemented a strategy for the consolidation of a variety of software and maintenance contracts into Enterprise License Agreements (ELAs) that provide Agency-wide support under single contracts rather than multiple contracts across the Agency. NASA’s Shared Services Center Enterprise License Management Team (ELMT) regularly reviews the agency’s contract requirements to identify and consolidate software and maintenance products, utilizing small business participation whenever possible. During FY 2009, the ELMT consolidated 4 contracts, resulting in approximately $4.5M in savings. The ELMT efforts were recently recognized with the NASA Acquisition Improvement Award and on the White House website http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/procurement_index_gov_contracting/#memo.

Learning Objectives:

  • Appropriate agency volume discount for application licenses
  • Contract Consolidation Initiatives (CCI) and contract award and monitoring
  • Executive sponsorship and user support for ELA’s
  • Strategies to reduce overall maintenance cost to the agency