Federal agencies are getting better at buying advanced technologies like artificial intelligence but still lag in deploying those tools due to security concerns, according to a Homeland Security Department procurement official.
“We’re doing a really good job at procuring things,” Jessica Clark, an official on the Acquisition Systems Team in DHS’s Office of the Chief Procurement Officer, said Tuesday during the Professional Services Council’s annual Tech Trends conference. “But getting it up and running safely is always going to be an issue for our program managers.”
Clark said DHS takes a different procurement strategy when looking at new and innovative technologies, preferring a phased approach where a relatively large pool of vendors is whittled down over the course of multiple prototypes and demonstrations, with each subsequent phase using larger datasets that are more and more relevant to the program.
She cited the department’s work integrating AI into the Contractor Performance Assessment Reporting System, or CPARS, which contracting officers use to gauge a vendor’s past performance on government contracts. For the CPARS AI effort, DHS started with nine vendors, which was then down-selected to six and then four.
At that point, DHS partnered with the Health and Human Services Department to ensure the resulting set of contracts would be viable across government.
“Our goal is not just to get an AI, but to get multiple vendors that could provide AI that potentially we could then put on a [governmentwide acquisition contract] or some kind of best-in-class contract,” Clark said. “Then, agencies throughout the federal government would have a choice of vendors to come and look at to help with their CPARS—their contractor performance assessments.”
But DHS and other agencies are finding they have “a lot of flexibility” ..
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