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Best Practices: Global Acquisition and Assistance System
Generating value through the Program Management Office
Executive Summary
USAID’s Global Acquisition and Assistance System (GLAAS) is an enterprise business system that will, for the first time, provide the U. S. Agency for International Development (USAID) with the ability to process more than $10 billion in yearly contract and grant transactions worldwide. USAID’s investment in GLAAS is consistent with the Agency’s business modernization initiatives and meets the objectives of the E-Government Act of 2002. GLAAS maximizes interoperability and minimizes redundancy through integration with multiple internal and external systems. The integration of GLAAS with USAID’s enterprise financial management system provides real-time posting of commitments, obligations, and awards, as well as synchronization of vendor data. This system provides inclusive, timely, and accurate reporting for USAID management, and accommodates requirements and requests from external stakeholders, such as the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and Congress. GLAAS is tightly integrated with public-facing government-wide systems including FPDS-NG, FedBizOpps, FAADS, and Grants.gov, to increase transparency and visibility by providing timely and accurate USAID data to the public.
USAID experienced some difficulties in its initial efforts to develop an automated solution that would modernize its acquisition and assistance business processes, including replacing the disparate paper-based processes used in 81 missions worldwide. The Agency’ s early efforts to provide an acquisition and assistance solution reflected two separate projects called the Procurement System Improvement Project (PSIP) and the Joint Assistance Management System (JAMS). For several reasons, including challenges associated with requirements definition, commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) software limitations, and other issues, the development and deployment of PSIP and JAMS experienced significant delays. The Agency terminated work on these two projects, deciding to develop a single system that included the required functionality for both acquisition and assistance. This single system, GLAAS, provides significant benefits to the Agency by streamlining and standardizing business processes, optimizing staff workload, reducing deployment costs, centralizing project management functions, and facilitating real-time reporting. In conjunction with the decision to develop GLAAS, USAID introduced more disciplined and robust project management processes.
An integrated, multi-disciplinary team of USAID staff and numerous contractors completed the major software development efforts, with global deployment and training activities well underway. More than 3,000 users at 23 offices at USAID Headquarters and 68 missions around the world use GLAAS to manage contracts and grants. Deployment to the remaining 13 missions is currently on schedule, with completion expected during 2011. USAID’s success in the development and deployment of GLAAS reflects the disciplined use of best practices in information technology (IT) program/project management, earned value management, quality and organizational change management, and strategic communication.
