isabella232 / tis-discovery

Project materials for the Team Integration System discovery project

Team Integration System (TIS)

Overview

What are we doing?

We are initiating a project that seeks to further understand the federal workforce landscape and regulatory environment, and start defining a potential integrated system that we hope could help reshape the government labor market and provide meaningful work to the public.

Our goal is to investigate the formation of a program that houses an integrated system that helps government managers match their budgeted project work with hybrid teams of available, skilled, and interested employees and contractors. These teams would be designed to solve a problem for a period of time, and the system would generate and finalize contracts with combinations of vendors and HR efficiently through automation. This system would foster collaboration between various divisions of GSA and other agencies, like OPM.

Why?

Building highly skilled cross-functional teams within government is very tedious and time consuming, which hinders execution of our mission.

• Hiring is lengthy or prohibitive
• Contracting processes are often manual
• Contracting staff are in short supply and high demand
• Locating the right contractors for the job is difficult (and can often be switched out)
• Managers are subjected to lengthy delays in authorizations and reviews

This often results in monolithic contracting based on brittle requirements over long multi-year performance periods, where the requirements are themselves often procured separately. This system is easier to execute but is neither efficient nor cost-effective for actual delivery. This approach also tends to disadvantage small businesses and independent consultants, who have a lot to offer the government.

Having internal talent that can be flexibly assigned to carry out organizational needs can be an efficient and cost-effective solution. However, organizations are not able to employ all of the talent they need long-term for financial, political, and logistical reasons.

Process

Have a look at our strategy or timeline to learn more about the project.