Acquisition 2.0: GSA uncovers the pitfalls and promise of crowdsourcing

Contracting officers, program managers and lawyers (among others) in both government and industry have expressed concern about some acquisition 2.0 ideas that GSA has been exploring as part of its BetterBuy initiative, writes Mary Davie at GovLoop.

“[They] had to address a series of issues related to security, records management, privacy, access to information, user registration and authentication, roles and responsibilities as well as trying to figure out a way to get or give meaningful input in a manageable way,” Davie writes.

GSA, the federal government’s pioneer in the acquisition 2.0 territory, has used a wiki to develop requirements for three projects and solicit three kinds of input. Now that the agency has compiled some lessons learned, officials are hoping to refine their use of the wiki. They also hope to create a forum to stimulate more dialogue between government and industry officials during the acquisition 2.0 process — “which will raise new concerns,” Davie writes.

What do you think? Read the full article at GovLoop and then post a comment either there or here at the FCW Insider. We will publish Davie’s article along with a selection of the best comments in our June 14 print edition of Federal Computer Week.

This discussion is part of the FCW Challenge, a joint project between FCW.com and GovLoop, a social network for government employees.

You can read more about the FCW Challenge here.

Here are the other topics up for debate:

Government social networks are Towers of Babel, doomed to topple.
The Open-Government Plan is Vaporware 2.0.
A mandate for the cloud is wishing for pie in the sky.
The federal workplace will never change. Telework? Fuggedaboudit!
Cybersecurity: This is a job for McGruff the Crime Dog.