2017 Acquisition Reform Initiative

On May 18, 2017, Congressman Mac Thornberry, Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, introduced H.R. 2511, Defense Acquisition Streamlining and Transparency Act. Among its numerous provisions, the bill enables the Department of Defense (DoD) to use commercial E-Commerce platforms for purchases of commercial-off-the-shelf goods, overhauls the defense contract audit process, injects considerations of system reliability and maintainability earlier in the acquisition process, and encourages government and industry to negotiate for intellectual property rights.

The bill was purposefully introduced in advance of the full committee markup of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2018 in order to give the interested public an opportunity to provide feedback. Accordingly, NDIA assembled a working group to provide preliminary line-in and line-out recommendations to the bill text and comments to inform the committee of industry concerns and provide ideas to improve the bill.