New Paper Examines Impact of COVID on IC Acquisition

According to an August 2020 Intelligence Insights paper examining the impact of COVID-19 on government acquisition processes, the Intelligence Community (IC) lags behind its Department of Defense and civil agency counterparts, resulting in a significant slowdown for new and current acquisition projects.

Developed by INSA's Acquisition Management Council, the paper finds the acquisition slowdown is greater across the IC than elsewhere in the Government, which is the opposite of what happened after 9/11. One positive sign is that as the pandemic-driven virtual work has continued, the IC is beginning to see some stabilization and throughput is beginning to increase. In closing, the paper offers examples of acquisition successes and recommendations the IC should embrace as best practices.

A special thank you to Howard Weitzner (Accenture), Mary Quinn (Deloitte), and Jen Sovada (MissionTech Solutions) for their leadership on this paper.