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About The Lab

The Lab is a DOC forum designed to facilitate the use of innovative and underutilized acquisition techniques and smart program management tools throughout the acquisition and program lifecycle. The Lab provides a safe environment to explore new ideas, share lessons learned, and promote best practices. It provides a catalyst for institutionalizing changes that promote innovation and managed risk-taking through iterative review, analysis, and refinement of techniques.

The Lab’s strategic objectives aspire to create greater efficiencies and improve effectiveness across the Department’s acquisition system and foster an environment and culture conducive to smart, innovative risk taking. In addition, the Lab seeks to support the return on investment of taxpayer dollars across the Federal Government.

The goal of the Lab is to promote and support the Big ”A” concept by educating, inspiring, supporting, and fostering collaboration among the acquisition team to achieve the following objectives:

Our Guiding Principles

2022 Report on the Lab

The Lab Report (July 2022).pdf

The Innovation Council

The Innovation Council consists of Bureau Innovation Advocates (BIAs) from each contracting entity within the Department, along with representatives from the Office of Acquisition Management and selected program managers. This council convenes at least monthly to deliberate on procurement trends, share best practices, exchange lessons learned, and foster open dialogue within the Department in a secure environment for collaboration.

The BIAs serve as a liaison for their organization and as an extension of The Lab, they disseminate information as needed within their Bureau. A long-term objective for each BIA is to function as a change agent, a coach, and a mentor to acquisition teams, aiming to streamline the entire acquisition and procurement process, reduce burden and time, and ensure that the outcomes are mission focused.

BUREAU/OFFICE	NAME	CONTACT INFORMATION
CONTRACTING
Census	Kristina Hartman	[email protected]
ES	Lauren Gueye	[email protected]
ES	Brandon Harrell	[email protected]
FirstNet	Claire Rotruck	[email protected]
NIST	Forest Crumpler	[email protected]
NIST	Derek Greene	[email protected]
OAM	Todd Hill	[email protected]
NOAA	Pierre Smith	[email protected]
NOAA	Robert "Darryl" Frazier	[email protected]
OAM	Elliott Jones	[email protected]
OAM	Marcelle Loveday	[email protected]
USPTO	Alan Elder	[email protected]
USPTO	Yaritza Acton	[email protected]
PROGRAM AND PROJECT MANAGEMENT
NOAA	Mark B. Miller	[email protected]
OAM	Dan Bare	[email protected]