Device as a Service continues to gain proponents in government, which increasingly seeks to conduct business like a commercial enterprise.
This requires agencies to leverage resources they don’t own; with DaaS, vendors completely handle the technology lifecycle, from procurement to end-of-life IT asset disposition, because sensitive equipment such as laptops can’t simply be tossed.
Government wants to be an equipment consumer, not a manager, and DaaS lets agencies focus on their missions and avoid hiring support staff for IT infrastructure.
Below are more ways government can operate like a business when it comes to technology lifecycle services.
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The Current Federal Procurement Model Is Lacking
Unlike commercial enterprises, which allow expertise and the free market to dictate the best contractor for a particular opportunity, much of government currently limits what vendors can bid for. Agencies often enter multiyear agreements for, say, cloud migrations that take a year to complete to avoid having to reconsider vendors annually.
CDW Government often finds itself focusing on specific technical requirements, whether they’re tied to procurement or services, within agency requests for proposals.
There is a way for agencies to streamline procurement and reap the benefits of commercial services faster: By allowing CDW Government and its partners to better understand their mission and objectives up front and then present proposals, those bids will include specific terms and timelines — which might be multiyear — and ultimately land on pricing.
As the process stands, only a handful of large consulting firms have a seat at the table, and work filters down to components. This isn’t conducive to taking full advantage of CDW Government’s offerings.
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Relaxing Contract Reference Requirements
The General Services Administration has developed contract vehicles, such as OASIS+, to grant agencies the flexibility to choose smaller vendors for smaller projects (those in the ballpark of $25,000 to $50,000). Vendors must still be qualified within the category of the work they’re vying for.
Meanwhile, the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) allows agencies to quickly scale their cloud instances from a single device to thousands from among vendors it’s deemed secure. The process of approving these vendors, which used to take several years, can now be done in six months, presenting agencies with more options among the various cybersecurity, networking, data and compute contractors now authorized.
Still, vendors of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence struggle to find agencies willing to back their authorization, because references are hard to come by when your technology isn’t yet widely deployed. Agencies risk being left behind in the race for AI, which is why government should consider relaxing these requirements and instead look to success stories in the private sector that agencies can replicate.
