DHS to Adopt eSourcing 2.0

The DHS will get out of the paper business and adopt electronic bidding for all major programs. So said Department of Homeland Security’s Undersecretary for Management Rafael Borras (DHS’ Chief Acquisition Officer) in his welcome address to attendees at the Department’s fifth annual Industry Day which was held in Washington DC last week.

Borras began his address by stating that “I am directing our Chief Procurement Officer [Nick Nayak] and his team to institute a policy to eliminate the requirement for industry to submit paper-based proposals in response to our solicitations. Instead the department will move to aggressively use electronic submissions of proposals. So, I am also asking Nick (CPO) to work with our CIO to develop or establish a portal or a place or many portals where these electronic submittals can be made.”

“The key here, on the one hand is simple, we are reducing the cost of paper and the cost for production and delivery, but more importantly, we want to allow you to focus your time and attention on those submittals [sic] that you make as opposed to [looking at] how big is my binder. We want the focus to be on the quality of the submission.”

“We don’t see this as a burden, we think it will benefit you. I’ve asked the team to implement this by the end of the year.”

So, eSourcing 2.0 hits the federal government in 2012-2013!

Those of you reading this and scoffing that it will take 11 months to implement this strategy have to understand the enormous size of this department. To start, it has a discretionary spend of more than $50 Billion and 230,000 employees. On the procurement side, the group procures $20B+ in spend and has approximately 1,400 contracting employees and 18,000 long-term contracts in place to support 500 different programs. 80% of the contracts were competitively bid. With that amount of sourcing projects, their relative complexity, and the management of industry suppliers as a federal institution, an 11 month move to eSourcing 2.0  sounds ok.

Those of you reading this from a procurement department that does not use eSourcing, please send this article to your manager – the federal government is about to leap-frog you.

National Strategy for Global Supply Chain Security

Last week, President Obama ordered a development of a new strategy that will protect the US economy from supply chain disruptions. The strategy establishes two goals. The first is to promote the efficient and secure movement of goods and the second is to foster a global supply chain system that is prepared for and can withstand evolving threats and hazards, and rapidly recovery from disruptions. The 16-page directive can be found here. Obama has placed the DHS in charge of the program and has given it six months to develop a set of recommendations [Sidebar: As noted above, we also know that this program’s contracts will soon use electronic bidding].

The U.S. Government is interested in receiving recommendations from private sector and non-U.S. Government stakeholders regarding (but not limited to) the following areas:

• Specific opportunities to implement the goals of the Strategy and enhance the efficiency and resilience of the global supply chain.
• Understanding evolving threats (terrorist as well as natural) and vulnerabilities in the global supply chain as a whole and among different modes of transportation.
• International best practices, standards, or guidelines for reducing threats/ vulnerabilities and opportunities to encourage global implementation of them.
• Opportunities for the U.S. Government to work in concert with industry and the international community to further strengthen the global supply chain, including ways to increase participation in and improve the effectiveness of private-public partnership programs.
• Assumptions that currently inform supply chain security policies and programs that may be incorrect, dated, or obsolete.

Those civic-minded readers who would like to participate may do so at this DHS site.

Tom Linton Becomes Flextronics New CPO

Friend of the site, Tom Linton, has joined Flextronics as its new Chief Procurement Officer. Tom was most recently the CPO at LGE (the first in its history) and has also been the CPO at Freescale Semiconductor and Agere Systems. We discussed one of the Supplier Days his team hosted at LGE (Supplier Day, Beautiful Day) in an article two years ago which we think is worth another read this fine Friday morning.

In Flextronics’ official announcement, Francois Barbier, president of Flextronics Global Operations was quoted as saying “We are pleased that Tom has joined the Company. His reputation for transformational leadership is unmatched.” Indeed! Congrats Tom – you’re “on the Rise,” again!

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