Jul 28, 2026 · 52 min · 10 segments
The federal contracting market is generating more signals than most contractors know how to read. Ross Wilkers, Senior Staff Reporter of “Washington Technology,” covers government contracting for…
Ross WilkersGuestNeelima GroverHost
You can set the rules of the road for government acquisition as much as you want, as we've seen in 2025 and the early part of 2026 with the overhaul of federal acquisition regulations to Thank you so much for having me.
So in essence, they're trying to make things easier for contracting officers, especially to understand, and also for the industry to understand in simpler terms.
And this is true in private organizations as well that have been around for 100 years.
As easy and tempting as it is to talk about the public sector ecosystem is very different than industries, other industries, there is some truth to the uniqueness of it because you are working with taxpayer dollars.
However, I would venture to guess that as far as culture changes, cabinet level secretaries and the CEOs of Coca-Cola and Walmart, just to pick a couple of companies, I think they would find some commonalities in terms of how difficult it is to enact a culture change in organizations that have been around for 100 plus years.
Yeah, I had hosted a podcast with the chief growth officer at Noble Reach that is trying to get innovative ideas into the government, even national security and other critical sectors.
And he spoke about a very similar challenge that change in mindset is so difficult to get your arms around, which really is one of the big impediments in getting this speed of innovation in the government to actually work, which is what you're talking about as well.
And one of the myths about the acquisition regulation that built over time was that it did not allow for flexibility on the part of acquisition pros and contracting officers to go about things that are not what we'll call the traditional requirements process.
There were a lot of flexibilities that actually existed in the federal acquisition regulation.
If you have something that's 2000 pages long that tells you how to do your job, you're not going to read all that.
Who has time to read all that? So you're only going to go to the 40 or so pages that are relevant to you and follow the steps there.
So when you look at the acquisition and delivery environment, what do you think our contractors are consistently underestimating about the current system and the environment?
I don't know if it's underestimating as much as it is perhaps a misunderstanding.
You can set the rules of the road for government acquisition as much as you want, as we've seen in 2025 and the early part of 2026 with the overhaul of federal acquisition regulations to Thank you so much for having me.
So in essence, they're trying to make things easier for contracting officers, especially to understand, and also for the industry to understand in simpler terms.
And this is true in private organizations as well that have been around for 100 years.
As easy and tempting as it is to talk about the public sector ecosystem is very different than industries, other industries, there is some truth to the uniqueness of it because you are working with taxpayer dollars.
However, I would venture to guess that as far as culture changes, cabinet level secretaries and the CEOs of Coca-Cola and Walmart, just to pick a couple of companies, I think they would find some commonalities in terms of how difficult it is to enact a culture change in organizations that have been around for 100 plus years.
Yeah, I had hosted a podcast with the chief growth officer at Noble Reach that is trying to get innovative ideas into the government, even national security and other critical sectors.
And he spoke about a very similar challenge that change in mindset is so difficult to get your arms around, which really is one of the big impediments in getting this speed of innovation in the government to actually work, which is what you're talking about as well.
And one of the myths about the acquisition regulation that built over time was that it did not allow for flexibility on the part of acquisition pros and contracting officers to go about things that are not what we'll call the traditional requirements process.
There were a lot of flexibilities that actually existed in the federal acquisition regulation.
If you have something that's 2000 pages long that tells you how to do your job, you're not going to read all that.
Who has time to read all that? So you're only going to go to the 40 or so pages that are relevant to you and follow the steps there.
So when you look at the acquisition and delivery environment, what do you think our contractors are consistently underestimating about the current system and the environment?
I don't know if it's underestimating as much as it is perhaps a misunderstanding.
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