Contract Writing System
Abstract
The Army Contract Writing System (ACWS) will be the Army's single, next-generation, enterprise-wide contract writing, management, execution, and close-out software system. ACWS will facilitate the standardization of Army Procurement business processes and streamline the integration with Army Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. As a financial feeder system, ACWS will meet the compliance requirements of the Federal Financial Management Improvement Act of 1996. The system will meet the full scope of Army contracting requirements, including those in secure and non-secure locations, those supporting combat or non-combat contingencies, those within or outside the borders of the Continental United States, those supporting grants and assistance agreements, and those performing weapons systems, construction, installation, and other specialized contracting activities. This is consistent with Undersecretary of Defense, Acquisition, Technology and Logistics (USD(AT&L)) memorandum; Department of Defense (DoD) Functional Contract Writing and Administration, dated 21 October 2011, which directed each of the Services to develop a new contract writing system. Accordingly, the Army received an Office of Secretary of Defense (OSD) Deputy Chief Management Officer (DCMO) validated problem statement and the Army Acquisition Executive approved the ACWS Materiel Development Decision (MDD) on 29 October 2014. On 24 March 2016, the USD(AT&L) signed the program's Request For Proposal (RFP) Release Acquisition Decision Memorandum (ADM) which designated ACWS as an unbaselined, Major Automated Information System Acquisition Category IAM program, and approved the Army's request to release an request for proposal to industry to procure a Commercial-off-the-Shelf (COTS) system. Since awarding a contract to CGI Federal Inc. on 22 May 2017, the program recently completed a robust risk reduction effort that aligned Army's business processes to the selected commercial-off-the-shelf product, and reduced unnecessary requirements and interfaces. In August 2018, program conducted a successful Baseline Authority to Proceed decision and obtained the Army Acquisition Executive's approval to award initial development task order. ACWS is on track to deploy a Minimum Viable Solution (MVS) to two pilot units in late FY 2019 / early FY 2020, and achieve Initial Operational Capability (IOC) NLT 3Q FY 2020. ACWS was approved by The Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment (USD(A&S)) as one of the pilot programs supporting the FY 2018 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) Section 873 Agile Pilots. The duration of the ACWS 873 Pilot Program is planned through Full Development. As part of the Sec 873 activities ACWS is realigning and restructuring during the IOC development which will include a contract structure that enables Agile best practices and incremental capability delivery to the field. ACWS, as Sec 873 Agile Pilot Program, will support OSD need to quickly identify lessons learned, reduce procedural delays, improve policy, and enhance workforce training. Sec 873 Pilot Programs, such as ACWS, are intended to deliver greater capability to the Army rapidly and at lowered costs. Sec 873 Pilot provides programs the opportunity to restructure in order to streamline contract and acquisition approaches and tear down barriers to agile development without penalty. Lessons learned will be used to help shape agile policy, processes and tools for DoD.
Document Details
- Document Type
- R2 Budgetary Justification
- Publication Date
- Oct 01, 2020
- Source ID
- 0605047A_5_2040_PB_2020
- Change Summary Explanation
- Service Agency Name
- Army
Entities
Organizations
- United States Army
Related Documents
- Child Project: Contract Writing System
- Child Accomplishment: Acquisition, Testing, and Deployment Phase
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- Child Cost Item: e28a3ca3e8a47bd14f19215ce67d3dc8