The government has spent years talking about acquisition reform. But if there was a theme running through the “Acquisition at Mission Speed” panel at the Intel Summit, it was that moving faster isn’t necessarily about finding a new acquisition authority or buying a new technology.
It is about changing the way government works.
“We’re changing processes, not products,” said Tammy Griffith, Deputy Director of Business Management & Acquisition and Senior Acquisition Executive at the National Security Agency, pointing to speed, scale, integration and innovation as priorities driving acquisition transformation.
Across the intelligence community and Department of War, government acquisition leaders and their industry counterparts described an environment where commercial technology is evolving faster than traditional requirements, budget cycles and contracting processes can accommodate.
The challenge now is figuring out how to close that gap.
Stop Writing Requirements for Yesterday’s Technology
For the Space Force, Col. Timothy Trimailo, USAF, highlighted three significant barriers to bringing commercial innovation into the mission: requirements, classification and operational integration.
Requirements may be the most fundamental.
Traditionally, government has developed highly prescriptive requirements and handed them to industry to build. The problem is that a years-long development and acquisition cycle can result in government eventually receiving exactly what it asked for, only to discover that technology and the mission have already moved on.
Col. Trimailo argued for shifting the conversation away from detailed specifications and toward the outcome the government actually needs.
The goal should be “less about the prescriptive requirements and more about what is the end state,” he said.
That shift becomes particularly important as the Space Force moves toward commercial-first acquisition and mission portfolios. Instead of viewing individual programs of record as the destination, acquisition leaders can look across an entire mission and determine the best combination of government-developed systems, commercial technology and capabilities purchased as a service.
That opens the door to more opportunistic acquisition and gives the government greater ability to incorporate technologies that industry has already developed.
But Col. Trimailo emphasized that acquisition professionals can’t make that transition alone. “It is on the workforce to execute that way, but it really starts with the leadership.”
If leaders tell acquisition professionals to move quickly and take calculated risks, they also have to support them when those decisions don’t produce perfect results.
It’s 2026. Why Is There Still So Much Paperwork?
Technology may also provide part of the answer.
Tara Murphy Dougherty, CEO of Air, pointed to the enormous amount of manual work that remains embedded in critical national security programs.
“It is unbelievable how much paperwork is still done in 2026 on a critical national security program,” she said.
She pointed to munitions production as one example, where manual processes across government program offices, prime contractors and suppliers can consume hundreds of hours. Purpose-built artificial intelligence applications can automate portions of that work and turn processes that take hours, weeks or even months into dramatically faster workflows.
But simply adding AI isn’t enough.
“It’s really important that these capabilities are purpose-built,” Murphy Dougherty said.
National security missions demand accuracy, context and applications designed for the specific problem being solved. Acquisition modernization, in other words, shouldn’t just be about buying the newest technology. It should be about applying technology to the bureaucratic friction preventing capabilities from reaching the mission.
Commercial First Requires Government and Industry to Change
MG (ret) Charlie Cleveland, senior counselor at Palantir Technologies, emphasized that industry has responsibilities in acquisition transformation, too.
Commercial-first acquisition can create understandable concerns for government customers, including vendor lock-in, control of data and the ability to modify software. Industry needs to address those concerns rather than simply asking government to move faster.
It also needs to deliver.
If government purchases a commercial capability because it promises speed, users should be able to see tangible progress quickly. Commercial-first cannot become another lengthy development process wearing a different label.
That requires a different relationship between government and its vendors, one in which companies work more directly with users, understand the operational problem and adapt their technology as conditions change.
The traditional model of locking dozens or hundreds of requirements into a program for years can work against that objective.
As one panelist put it, requirements frozen at a single point in time can become “where innovation goes to die.”
Acquisition Reform Is a Workforce Issue
The conversation repeatedly returned to the people responsible for making acquisition work.
Efstathia Fragogiannis, chief procurement officer at the CIA, said acquisition transformation can’t happen without giving that workforce the training, tools and authority to operate differently.
“We can’t do anything without the workforce,” Fragogiannis said.
At CIA, that has included eliminating bureaucratic reviews, streamlining decision-making and pushing greater autonomy down to the workforce. According to the discussion, roughly 90% of acquisitions no longer require some of the burdensome reviews that previously slowed the process.
“Focusing on innovation and agility” and eliminating bottlenecks can deliver tangible results, Fragogiannis said.
The agency is also working to expand the acquisition toolkit, including greater use of Other Transaction authority and Commercial Solutions Openings. But authorities alone don’t create speed. Contracting officers and program managers have to become comfortable operating outside the processes they’ve traditionally relied upon.
That means being willing to operate in the gray, experiment and make decisions closer to the mission.
The same principle emerged across the panel: A high-performing acquisition professional today needs to be willing to take risk, experiment and learn. Acquisition professionals increasingly need to understand not only contracting, but also the technology they are buying and the mission their customer is trying to accomplish.
Buying Fast Isn’t Enough. Government Has to Sustain Fast.
One of the most interesting wrinkles in the acquisition reform discussion was what happens after a commercial technology successfully makes it through the proverbial “valley of death.”
Government still has to pay for it.
The growing shift toward software, cloud services and commercial capabilities purchased “as a service” fundamentally changes the government’s traditional approach to sustainment.
Under older models, government might spend heavily upfront to develop and field a system, with a comparatively smaller sustainment tail. Commercial services can reverse that equation. Development costs may be lower, but agencies need predictable funding to keep purchasing the capability and receiving continuous technology updates.
Continuing resolutions make that particularly complicated. A commercial software company generally doesn’t want 65 or 87 days of funding for a product normally sold through annual subscriptions.
That means acquisition organizations increasingly have to think about renewal dates, budget availability and sustainment before they make the initial purchase. The upside is significant. Rather than owning a system that slowly becomes obsolete, government can potentially benefit from the constant technology refresh happening in the commercial marketplace.
But commercial companies need something in return: enough predictability to know that a successful pilot has a viable path toward sustained use.
Industry Engagement Has to Start Earlier
Faster acquisition also means government can’t wait until a solicitation hits the street to begin talking with industry.
Across the intelligence community, agencies are experimenting with industry days, reverse industry days, pitch events, prototype opportunities, white papers and other mechanisms designed to surface capabilities earlier.
The CIA, for example, has expanded its industry engagement strategy as it looks to make working with the agency easier and create more opportunities to understand industry’s pain points.
Other intelligence organizations are similarly trying to communicate their technology direction before a procurement appears on a formal acquisition forecast.
That matters because speed isn’t simply about how quickly a contracting officer can make an award. Industry needs enough visibility into the mission to anticipate where government is headed and determine whether an existing commercial capability can solve the problem.
If those conversations begin only after requirements have been finalized, much of the opportunity for speed has already disappeared.
Mission Speed Starts With Leadership
There is no single acquisition authority, AI tool or commercial technology that will solve the government’s speed problem.
The panel, deftly moderated by Ron Carback, vice president, client executive, CACI, instead pointed toward a broader cultural shift: define outcomes instead of overprescribing requirements; engage commercial industry earlier; build sustainment into acquisition strategies from the beginning; give acquisition professionals a larger toolkit; and accept that moving quickly sometimes means making decisions without perfect information.
Most importantly, leadership has to create an environment where the workforce can actually operate that way. Government can tell its acquisition professionals to innovate, experiment and take risks. But if every mistake sends the organization racing back toward another layer of review, the old processes will inevitably return.
Acquisition at mission speed therefore may depend less on another acquisition reform initiative than on whether agencies can make their current reforms stick. The authority and technology exist. The question is if the workforce and leadership can move fast enough to take advantage of them.
