Disrupting Norms & Breaking Rules in Federal Acquisition with Steve Barva

[00:00:00] Ryan Connell: Hello, uh, I'm Ryan Connell. I'm with the Chief Digital Artificial Intelligence Office, uh, here live at NCMA World Congress. Uh, joined by Steve Barva. Steve, you want to introduce yourself? 

[00:00:13] Steve Barva: Yeah, I am, uh, Steve Barva, consultant for, uh, the federal government acquisition, generally subject matter expert, uh, chief disruptor, if I'm given my way, uh, break whatever rules I can find and help you do the same.

[00:00:26] Ryan Connell: I love it. I love it. Uh, let's get into it. Uh, I mean, let's just at a high level, talk about breaking some rules, fighting through the red tape. Um, But I'll, I'll turn it over to you. 

[00:00:37] Steve Barva: Fantastic. I appreciate it. Uh, thanks for the opportunity, by the way. Uh, listen to the podcast, uh, every time it drops and, uh, haven't been a big fan of both, uh, what Bonnie did before and now what you've taken over.

It's, it's phenomenal and I'm happy to, to be invited here to help. Uh, so the first thing I would say is every rule is meant to be broken. Um, and, uh, I was taught day one in the army, retired, uh, uh, army NCO, uh, was taught that there's two rules in the department of defense, uh, and, uh, Kill the enemy and break their stuff.

Um, well, I like to take that and apply it, uh, to what we do in acquisition, uh, what we do as a, uh, state. And, and in that case to go faster, to, uh, be looking further down the road than anybody else's doing. We've got to break some rules. We've got to break that red tape. We've got to find our way forward.

And my favorite because, uh, folks trip over it every time I bring it up, folks are like, Whoa, hold on. That's it's, it's like, The most sacred rule we have is competition and contracting. Okay, CICA. 

[00:01:37] Ryan Connell: Yeah, 

[00:01:37] Steve Barva: CICA. Go right for the throat, right? If you're going to go in and you're going to make changes, if you're going to go in and you're going to do something differently, why not start at the top?

Sure. Um, so we need to start taking a look as a, Defense industrial base on the, um, side of the, of industry. And, and as a government arm that is trying to extend our reach throughout the world and, and further, whatever the government agencies, um, mission set is, obviously, uh, we talk department of defense most of the time, right?

Um, and in the DoD that is national security and, and pushing forward in the forefront. Uh, sometimes we need to go fast at the expense of things like competition. Sure. Sometimes we pay more, uh, because it's worth going fast and everybody says, Oh yeah, well we know we've got, we've got some exceptions to competition.

We have, um, uh, information sharing and. I was lucky enough here, uh, at world Congress to, to have just completed a few minutes ago, uh, some innovation, uh, innovation in solicitations to allow for, uh, some non traditional contracting actions, things like CSOs to OTAs. Um, I brought that up the first time in minds exploded.

Folks were like, well, wait a minute, CICA violation, right. At. If you're going to use a CSO, how are you not cutting out competition? Um, and for those that may not be on the cutting edge, uh, a CSO is a commercial solutions offering. Um, it allows you to put out, uh, what is treated like a solicitation. It's a notice.

And you say, Hey, in this notice, we are looking for folks who have commercial offerings that are innovative, that are cutting edge and allow us to do something, something the government's already interested in. You've already solved this problem. We just need to know about it. That counts as a competitive action, 

[00:03:25] Ryan Connell: right?

[00:03:26] Steve Barva: Only one person comes in off that CSO, right? And you get one response, you get a white paper and you get very, very excited about that, that innovative solution that they've come up with. And I've seen several, um, unfortunately, most of my experience with CSOs has been behind that. Uh, sort of classified curtain.

So as much as I'd like to dive in and talk some specifics, um, I'm pretty sure that your bosses would not be real happy with that. So we'll leave that where it is. Um, uh, but the idea there that we can circumvent SICA and they have now given the authority out to the DOD. to circumvent SICA, to be able to go around and, and, and really get after what we need.

Uh, Major General Holt, uh, was the Air Force AONT, uh, a couple of years ago. Uh, I say everything's a couple of years ago, right? We're talking 2020. I think he retired here, um, a year or two ago now. Um, but he used to come in and every time he would say, tell me what rule you want to break and I'll authorize it at least one time.

We'll break that rule. Well, one day. Uh, I was working at, um, SAFCDM, Concepts Development and Management for the Secretary of the Air Force's office. Um, shameless plug for those guys over there, they do phenomenal work. Uh, specifically though, it was with an office that dealt with cyber and strategic enabling.

Um, and we were trying to move the ball down the field. We were trying to go fast in a classified environment without Sharing things we didn't need to share with anybody. We didn't need to share it with. Uh, and so we went to him and we said, Hey, we want to do this thing. And it's going to require us to waive Tina as amended.

Uh, folks get excited. When I say Tina, I'm aware that Tina is not called Tina anymore. There are, uh, other iterations that have been authorized by law that replaced Tina and moved down the line. Um, uh, but for us sort of old hats, that's where we can't stop saying Tina. Right. And we know it's been amended and we're still moving that direction.

It's, it's waverable at the HCA level at the head of contracting activity. Um, and, and the DOD, of course, that is a much more spread out process to get to the head of contracting activity, right? This is not, the HCA is not a phone call away. Um, I've had the pleasure of working at the department of state where I literally could pick up the phone and call the HCA.

There was only two people between she and I, uh, so again, shameless plug to another great organization, AQM, there, uh, at the Department of State, who is moving some, uh, some amazing things themselves down the field by utilizing this mindset, by taking a look at the rules, determining what's slowing us down, what's not allowing us to get the right people on the right job for the right duration of time, and executing what we need to get it done.

[00:06:02] Ryan Connell: Yeah. 

[00:06:02] Steve Barva: Um, and a great example, again, we've talked a little bit here, uh, Sika being tossed out our Tina being caught, tossed out. Uh, the thing with Tina being tossed out was what I call a three dimensional, um, source selection. So imagine you've got a board here and on the left axis, you've got security clearances, what's the, one of the biggest complaints in, in classified environments is we can't get a clearance.

Chicken and the egg. Nobody wants to sponsor us. And so all we do is sort of eat our own in the clearance process. And so we came up with the idea that you could slide up that board. Hey, if you've got a secret security clearance, we're going to drop you in here at a secret level. And we're going to sponsor at the higher levels as, as is appropriate.

On this slide here and across the top. One of the things that you do is you take the areas and the expertise that that particular organization or that contract action is going to need to support and, and you drop those areas in there. So let's say you were doing it, and this is probably not a good example of what an organization would actually do, but it's one that's easy to understand for, for most.

Folks, um, so we're going to do base operations, right? For an installation somewhere on the DOD. And so you need your landscaping services and you need your building maintenance and you need your, um, administration support and you need your HR support, and those are all across your top. And then on your left axis, you've got here the X and Y, if you will, um, you've got the different environments that they're going to operate in.

Well, I mean, if you're in the skiff under the mountain, take your pick on what mountain that might be. That HR person, that person cutting the grass may need a top secret security clearance to know that that's government grass. Um, and, and then. You get down to your mundane, hey, you know, it's a National Guard training area where we're storing tactical vehicles in the open.

That guy probably, or gal, doesn't need potentially a security clearance at all to be in there cutting grass. Um, and so we had sort of set that up as an X and Y axis, but where it gets to a 3D, a 3 dimensional model now. Is when you look at what they're going to do and how they're going to do it, you're going to give them an opportunity as both small and large businesses to be.

The guy to be the lady, um, in the process. And so you put that out to both of those individuals and now you have this, uh, I call it the Star Trek table. And, you know, you look at that hologram table that pops up in the Star Wars and Star Trek movies, and you can see the topography and everything moves across and you just sort of move along your X and Y axis.

And it leaves you with a grid square. It leaves you with a section on this map that gives you some topography and you're left with a group of folks. Well, you take a look at who's inside of that square and you may have four or five large businesses and one or two small businesses. And now you start evaluating them, not on what price they can do it for, not on what that, um, what relationship they're able to leverage to get their price down on it.

But what value do they bring to the team? Um, uh, years and years ago, we had a contract. We referred to as two guys in a trailer. Um, there were lots and lots of large defense contractors. Imagine the big guys. We all know who those. Big four or five are, they had all come to the table and they had all said to us, we can do this thing.

And we said, no problem. We're going to have you try it. So we're going to set a test up. You're going to send your folks in here. They're going to run the test. You're going to show us, you can do it. It's going to spit out a score. You're going to get an 80, a 90, or whatever your score is. That's irrefutable.

You solved 80 percent of the problem, 90 percent of the problem, whatever it was, they all failed. Every one of them failed, um, or, or didn't meet, I shouldn't say failed, didn't meet the operational contingency level, uh, for the mission set that we were working with. But we brought in two guys in a trailer who didn't miss one and in fact found a flaw in the test.

That they then could exploit sure for additional points. Sure. So these guys ended up with more points than were available on the test, except they're two dudes in a trailer in Pennsylvania. How do you, how do I contract with those folks? Sure. How do I get them what they need? And then you start looking at, they don't have a cost accounting system in place.

It's two dudes in a trailer. Um, and, and so as we started working through, We need to go ask for those waivers. Yeah. We need to be willing and, and it to be acceptable for us to go to whoever that is. It's not always going to be the HCA. It's not, it may be a division chief. It may be a branch chief. It may be your contracting officer.

Some of the smartest folks I've met are the straight out of the school house, right out of college contract specialist, procurement analyst folks who aren't jaded yet. Like some of us that have been in the game for 20 years Um, and they're coming up with ideas where they're going. Hey, I think we should really do A b and c and we go.

Oh, yeah, you can't because sika. Well, wait a minute Let's, let's wave Sika. Uh, right here at NCMA, uh, two, three years in Boston, I think. I try to come every year, so that sometimes they all bleed together. They had a former chief creative officer from Disney. And I'm going to bastardize this story a little bit.

Uh, but the gist of it was, uh, he went down and was watching one of their lines. They were making these glass cups. And when they'd get to the end of the glass cups, they would wrap them in newspaper. And Um, and those newspapers would get put in the little buckets and they'd get shipped out and, and they were making say, uh, 4, 000 of these a day is what could go down the line.

Well, he'd been charged because all of the math said they should be making 5, 000 cups a day. And so they said, Hey, we need you to figure out how you can make this go faster. Yeah. And no matter what he tried, they couldn't go faster. His people just couldn't go faster. Add people to the line, take them away, change this material, change that material.

They're spending all this money. And it's not getting any better. I'm marginally either direction, nothing worth what they're spending on it. Right. Um, and then he says, he's, he's walking through with a elementary school class. I think he had sent kindergarten. Uh, maybe he didn't, maybe that's just what's stuck in my head, but there's these kindergartners going through.

And, and so he's telling them the story and what's going on. And then he says, you know, I'm really trying to figure out. How to do this better. What would you do? How would you make this go faster? And this little kindergartner looks at him and says i'd poke their eyes out And he sort of laughs about it and says why would you poke their eyes out because they're reading the newspaper Um that kindergartner just solved the problem The problem wasn't they needed new material.

The problem wasn't that they needed They needed, they hired blind folks. They literally replaced their staff on the line with blind folks and not did, not only did they make their 5, 000, but they exceeded the 5, 000 target at that point because they were able to eliminate what was holding them back. Um, but it took a kindergartner to do it.

It took that day one procurement analyst, um, who needs to not be afraid to break the rules, who needs to, that, that contract specialist who needs to not be afraid to go to the contracting office yet and say, hi, no, we've never done it before. But I think it would be cool if, and sometimes it's just cool.

It's just, uh, the bosses said we can't do this. And the school houses said we can't do this and I'm going to do it anyway. So let's do this. They're going to push it back. They're going to push it down. They're going to trample over you. Cause I've never seen it done before because they've never enjoyed that activity.

Um, but if we keep pushing at it, if each one of us keeps breaking a new rule, every day, We're going to get to a place where the rules just fall down. 90 percent of the rules that we have are put into place because one time or a handful of times, somebody did something that we don't want them to do anymore for right or wrong reasons.

And now the rest of us fight it for the rest of our careers. And if nobody stands up to go, Hey, that was a one off. Sometimes people just make mistakes or sometimes you just hire a bad apple. Um, sometimes people do the wrong thing for, Intentional reasons that are not positive. We need to get away from punishing the group for those activities.

And I think, uh, the more that we push, the more that folks are willing to take that level of risk, uh, the better off we're going to be, the faster we're going to move. And the more often we're going to get what we need for a better price. I'll just say a better cost because I think that the time will also increase as we start to trust each other.

Um, the more we open up our books, again, we've got all these rules about when I can tell you what I can tell you. I remember a time where I brought it up and I said, uh, why don't we tell the contractor what the budget is? Why don't, because then how are we going to get adequate pricing competition?

Everybody's going to have the same price. How are we going to know what everybody's just going to tell us it's what our budget is then? Well, we found a couple of things out because I did have, uh, some exceptional leadership who was willing to go, you know what? This isn't that risky. Yeah. Um, I, we're talking a sat by I think at this point, um, and.

We're willing to go. Let's try it because if it goes the way we think it's going to go, I'm going to be able to go, see, I told you so. And everybody else is going to go. Yeah, yeah. This is why we do that. Here's a use case. We did it. Well, what we found is folks didn't come back in at our budget. Um, some of them came in over our budget.

Hey, you just can't do what you're asking to be done for the budget that you think you've got. Um, and as a result of that, uh, we considered whether or not we were gold plating our own requirements. Is there something in here we can cut? Is there, uh, maybe we can outsource some of this to the government as opposed to having the contractor do it?

Is there an expertise somewhere we can utilize internally? You know, all of those things that we as acquisition professionals already consider on a day to day basis. Um, and then a couple of companies came in real low. Um, and so we ultimately called everybody in the room and we said, Hey, Hey, can we have Steve's barbecue house?

Uh, that's a made up company, of course, if, uh, if that wasn't understood and, uh, and, uh, Ryan's massage parlor over here and, uh, on this side, we're going to have, uh, Joe's convenience store, uh, and, and Rob's bar. Gas station. Um, and I literally set them on different sides of the room and I said, Hey, you guys don't think we have enough money and you guys are so wildly low.

We're not even sure that you understand the requirement. Again, something you don't do, right? You don't, first of all, you don't put them in the same room. Secondly, We don't tip our hand like that. Um, and we, we laid it all on the table. They talked to each other and they basically came back and this guy goes, well, you know, we assumed that we were going to be able to get government cloud support for this project.

And we were going to end up shameful plug platform. One, um, was going to provide our cloud support over here. And because of that, we're considerably lower than they are because they're doing a self hosted cloud inside of. Yeah. Yeah. Um, the Jedi or a Jedi is gone now, of course, but, um, thank you. Oh, I appreciate the, the assist there.

Um, and, uh, and, and so by getting them talking to each other, we did end up getting basically the same proposal from all four of the companies, but it's because they all sat in the same room, solved the problems that we were identifying because we were willing to talk about, we were willing to tell them The budgets are what budgets are.

You can read about it in the NDAA, if you'd like. Um, we are not hiding what the budget is in most cases, obviously there's some exceptions to that, but, um, so, so why are we, why are we tucking that in our pocket? Um, and that's just some quick examples of places where we're breaking rules for the sake of breaking rules and need to continue to do so.

Um, who knows what rule is going to lead to the microwave? Um, for those that aren't tracking, uh, DARPA invented the microwave when they were trying to create a weapon during Korean War, I believe. I may have that timeline wrong. So if you're one of those DARPA folks, I apologize. Um, but a gentleman walked by, chocolate bar melted in his pocket.

Um, they're running a test on something else and he says, Oh, this is terrible. A couple of days go by, something else is heating up and they're going, wait a minute. We've got the whole wrong idea here. Um, they didn't at that point go, ah, well, we didn't want a microwave, throw the baby out with the bath water and move on.

Um, what they did was start talking to people who, who could use this, who could, um, and then who's going to continue it, who wants to cost share. Um, and if I'm not mistaken, at least the way that I've. Read the story occurred. They brought a contractor into cost share on it. Um, and before the patent on the, uh, microwave ran out, that was because they were willing to trust.

They were willing to go outside of what we consider those general operating rules, uh, to, to trust a contractor partner. Um, and I'm glad they did because I like me a breakfast burrito in the morning and it's much easier to make on a, uh, in a microwave. 

[00:19:13] Ryan Connell: Yeah. You know, you, you, you hit a lot on, um, breaking the rules.

Uh, and as I was listening to your examples, be it a CSO as it pertains to SICA or, uh, more of like an oral presentation communication, it's really, it's really, they're within the rules. You're just breaking the norms, like the, the, the standards, if you will, in which people generally operate who have been here for a while.

Um, And you and I were talking offline about, uh, oral presentations and those kinds of things and just kind of listening to you talk here where you went from. Two guys in a trailer as an example of like, rather than give me a written proposal, let's just like, try it, show me, show me who's doing what, and we'll test you.

Uh, and then you, the other example of the, all of the contractors kind of coming together and having open conversations, like, uh, you're doing it, but like, why do you think that's so hard for the rest of the 180, 000 of us to just like jump on board, uh, and make that more normal? Well, 

[00:20:11] Steve Barva: I think everything's a risk.

Everybody has a different threshold for what risk they're willing to take on based on where they're at in their career cycle. And I talked about the best ideas are coming from younger participants in the process. Whether it be that kindergartner at Disney or whether it be the new procurement analyst contract specialist at your organization, it seems to be the higher up in the order that we get, the more risk averse we get.

Um, also. The less I think we understand how the day to day operation occurs. That's not an attack. We need folks who concentrate on the strategic values that are out there. But that person who's concentrating on the strategic values has a very different threshold for risk at the operational level that they don't have a great understanding day to day of how it's occurring and when it's occurring and who do I trust and who do I not trust because there are those folks out there who are doing the wrong thing and not for the right reason.

Um, and I think that's very different than the person who is doing the perceived wrong thing for the right reason. Um, and I, I'm not a big fan of painting with a broad brush, the entire acquisition workforce or, or, or any set of group of people. Um, but I think even in my own career, I've seen it, the higher I climb, the more responsibility I have, the less risk I'm willing to take on somebody below me.

Um, and I think that's exactly where we're at is that fresh mind that that person that's not been tainted by years of doing it one way has the good idea they have the perspective that will allow us to get where we're going faster or cheaper or. If we're willing to listen to them, the problem is the further removed we are from that person, the less we're willing to listen.

[00:22:02] Ryan Connell: And I could see, and I'm just kind of believing this from my own experience too, I could see where you're getting to a point as you kind of grow in your career, become more of a leader, where someone might propose some idea or question why we're doing something some way, and uh, Um, what maybe you didn't do something like that, but you did something a little bit similar that kind of jogs your memory and it didn't work out.

And so you're kind of quick to just like, that won't work. Um, and, and instead of letting them learn themselves, uh, you're just, it's a tendency and it's easy to say no. 

[00:22:33] Steve Barva: Well, and you probably don't have. So nothing's new under the sun. I had a, a friend in contracting who says that all the time. We've not, we're not doing anything now that we didn't do five years ago, 10 years ago, etc.

It may be for a new end state. It may be for a new problem set, but it's the same thing that we're doing. However, you can do the same thing a different way. Or with a different set of variables and get a different outcome. It's chemistry. If I mix ammonia and bleach, I'm going to kill myself. And it's going to blah, blah, blah, blah.

That doesn't taste good. I'm not going to like that. It's chlorine Bob. Right. Um, but. If it's bleach and water, now I've cleaned the surface and I may have tried chlorine or bleach and ammonia, um, which caused a problem. And I'm equating, much like you're talking about, this young individual to that scenario.

However, Their scenario is bleach and water, but I don't know enough cause I'm too far removed. But in defense of those folks who are too far removed, they are not in place day to day at the user level down, taking a look at the requirements packages that are coming in from our requirements owners to have that intimate level of detail.

So we need to make sure that our leaders are comfortable in the folks who work for them. In allowing them to break the rules or the norms Um, because I think what happens is a norm becomes a rule. So you're right. I sort of equate a lot of these norms Uh as rules, uh, but they become that way if your leadership tells you this is how you're going to do it Of course.

Yeah, it's a rule whether we like it or not. Yeah. Um, and that's where I think we need to get folks comfortable and, uh, we need to keep in mind, I think, um, and, and I'll use my own experience. I needed to keep in mind when it was me sitting in that seat, uh, that just because it could fail, doesn't mean that it's not going to be beneficial for us.

Um, uh, we found a thousand ways the light bulb didn't work before we found one way the light bulb worked. Um, the telephone didn't work right over and over and over again. And then one day it just did. Um, so sometimes you need to just keep plugging in the cords while you try to figure out. Well, I know the first nine ports didn't work 10 port bingo.

You've got my voice out there in cyber land. And we now know that's got to go into port number 10. Um, and, and I think that that's going to be a key mindset. I also think we're getting younger as a career field, statistically speaking, we're getting younger. And as we get younger, we get. Less collective memory towards getting burned.

We, we remember less about putting our hand on the stove as those folks that start to retire. Some of those senior leaders, some of those great leaders, by the way, in no stretch of the imagination. Am I disparaging any of them? They're phenomenal leaders, but they have scar tissue. Um, and they remember getting burned a lot more than, uh, say a Steve or a Ryan would have.

Um, and, and as we move into new environments, um, CDA, Oh, look at trade wins, um, the first time I walked into a NCMA Congress and, uh, don't far on my OTA was playing on the first set that I walked into, I had no idea where I was going. I walked in and I watched this set and I go, Oh, I've never heard of any of that.

Sure. I don't know what any of that is. Um, and then you, I took it back to the organization I was looking for a very, very risk averse organization. Very, I'm not going to mention them. I think they've gotten better since then, but at the time they didn't do anything new. Sure. They were still in 1955 and doing things the way they'd done them in 1955.

And I walked through the door and I said, you ever heard of this OTA thing? Guys, we are ruined in life. Absolutely not. No. We are not, we're not even going to consider it. And I got on an email distro. I talked to some very, very smart people who, um, I'm sure if you're listening to the defense, uh, Mavericks podcast, you understand exactly who those people are, um, and started to plug in information.

We started to let those folks know, but we're starting to see now those folks are now starting to, uh, I get into the positions where they're making those decisions and they're less risk averse. They haven't been burned as many times. They haven't been Uh, they haven't failed as many times that they're frustrated To trying something new.

Yeah, and it's huge and it is And then when you trust your folks, they're willing to get burned for you. So that contract specialist who is looking at this and going, if I try something new and it doesn't work, I have to start this whole process over again. I have to do every one of these documents again.

He's doubled his workload. His timeline didn't change or her timeline didn't change, but they've doubled their workload. But because they have the confidence of those leaders above them. Because they are being allowed to innovate. They're being allowed to bend or break the norms and the rules they're willing to do so.

And so they're giving you more and we're setting them up for the future to be better than we are today. Yeah. Um, and, and I think that's a key in, in the process to breaking the rules, because once we start breaking the mindset that you have to do it this way, We're going to open up a huge, huge chunk of knowledge base.

We don't even know exists. Yeah. 

[00:28:02] Ryan Connell: Yeah. No, that's incredible. Um, we're, we're getting close in time. Maybe, uh, one kind of big takeaway for the audience before we, uh, sunset. 

[00:28:10] Steve Barva: Yeah. Don't be afraid to do something different. Um, if you're not disrupting, you're not trying. Um, and I really believe that. That, uh, I need you.

And I think we, as a acquisition profession needs you to innovate and innovation does not mean that life shattering life altering, be willing to go ask for the waiver, be willing to ask how you get a waiver for something nobody's ever heard of, and be willing to ask if there's a reason that we do it the way that we do it, or do we just do it because that's the way we've always done it.

[00:28:42] Ryan Connell: Yeah. 

[00:28:42] Steve Barva: Love it. Hey, Steve, appreciate you being here today. Appreciate it, man. Thanks for having me on.