Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I rise in support of H.R. 1365, the Department of Homeland Security Acquisition Innovation Act. When the Department of Homeland Security was established in 2002, it was understood that the mission of safeguarding the American people would be a complex one. Today, 15 years later, the ever-changing nature of the terrorist threat and its landscape has demanded that DHS be more innovative. In the past 3 years, the Department has actively worked to carry out its procurement process in new and innovative ways. The Acquisition Innovations in Motion program, launched in 2015, is a framework for coordinated industry engagement in which opportunities, challenges, and strategies are discussed to identify acquisition solutions and foster greater efficiency and effectiveness. A key component of this program is a Procurement Innovation Lab called PIL. PIL is a virtual testing environment that experiments with innovative techniques to assess whether they can be effectively integrated into DHS' procurement process. To date, PIL is credited with reducing award times, the integration of existing flexibilities that are in use in other portions of the Federal Government, and improved acquisition training. Results, case studies, and lessons learned from the PIL process are regularly shared throughout DHS through webinars and the internal web portal.…”