DHS Procurement Innovation Lab
Organization Phone Number: (202) 447-5661
Main Organization Email: PIL@hq.dhs.gov
Organization Website: www.dhs.gov/pil

The Department of Homeland Security, Office of the Chief Procurement Officer, Procurement Innovation Lab is a DHS framework aimed at experimenting with innovative acquisition techniques across the DHS enterprise. The PIL provides a safe space to test new ideas, share lessons learned, and promote best practices. It fosters cultural changes that promote innovation and managed risk-taking through a continuous feedback cycle.

Miss the demo? Watch here!

Innovation Success Story: 
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Office of the Chief Procurement Officer (OCPO), Procurement Innovation Lab (PIL), is leading an effort on behalf of the entire federal acquisition community to determine whether artificial intelligence (AI) could assist contracting officers by rapidly identifying applicable records in the Contractor Performance Assessment Reporting System (CPARS) for source selection or evaluation purposes.

CPARS has a wealth of data, with over 1 million records, but it is difficult to rapidly access assessment reports that are relevant to a given source selection. What if you could procure a tool that summarized the data for you to assess, showing you which assessment records for a given company are most relevant to your current procurement, what the average performance ratings for a specific company are, detailed company performance information that was visualized in one dashboard for you to interact with, and more - all with just a few clicks of your mouse?

During the first phase of this project, DHS used the Commercial Solutions Opening Pilot Program (CSOP) authority to quickly award contracts to vendors of varying backgrounds, some with decades worth of federal experience, some new entrants into the federal marketplace. The goal of these awards was to encourage the development of multiple systems that used AI, machine learning (ML), natural language processing (NLP), and a host of other cutting-edge techniques to quickly identify the CPARS assessment records that were most relevant to a current past performance source selection evaluation based on a given solicitation.

Within four months of contract award, seven vendors were able to demonstrate a functional Minimum Viable Product (MVP) to users and other representatives from across the federal acquisition community. These final demonstrations of the MVP were not the first time that the group had seen prototypes of this product. Using iterative development approaches, the vendors engaged with frontline acquisition professionals right away and continued to do so throughout the entire process. There were two previous opportunities before the MVP demo for companies to present their proof of concept and an initial viable prototype (IVP), demonstrating potential, but not necessarily full functionality. During each of these stages, the vendors received feedback from users and stakeholders so that they could iterate, pivot, and persevere.

Our innovation alley demonstration will share with you the outcomes of Phase 1 of this government-wide acquisition initiative, including working demonstrations of the seven functional MVPs that were developed during Phase 1. These CPARS AI solutions will be further refined during Phase 2 of this four-phase initiative, and if you are a member of the federal acquisition community, we strongly encourage you to visit us in the innovation alley, and consider supporting the continued development of these prototypes in the upcoming fiscal year by serving as members of our government-wide CPARS AI User Group!

Accenture

Cormac

Hanger

IBM

Strongbridge

True Tandem

World Wide Technology 


Contact

Polly Hall
Director, DHS PIL
(202) 868-0562
Polly.Hall@hq.dhs.gov

Scott Simpson
Procurement Innovation Coach
(202) 875-0634
Scott.Simpson@hq.dhs.gov