Best Practices, as defined in the Federal Acquisition Regulation Part 37.501, are techniques that agencies may use to help detect problems in the acquisition, management and administration of service contracts.

Mission:
Provide a premier source for services information to both the public and private sector acquisition community to promote knowledge sharing and excellence in making smart business decisions.

Vision:
To establish an online resource center for services best practices that will evolve in to a knowledge management repository for best practices. The center will include areas for best practices, e-tools, policy and guidance, as well as education and training opportunities. The center will expand to include the ability to provide virtual experts to assist the acquisition community in planning, soliciting, evaluating, awarding, and managing service contracts. This center will also complement and enhance the Services Course under development by the Defense Acquisition University (DAU) and Federal Acquisition Institute (FAI) partnership-led interagency development team.

Benefit/Value of the Site:
Offers a collaborative structure that has proven to be extremely effective in the creation and transfer of knowledge within and between organizations, and provides value to organizations in the following ways:

• Provides a one stop resource information center for new/more junior employees and senior/more experienced practitioners;
• Facilitates the building of services knowledge;
• Facilitates the rapid identification of individuals with specific knowledge or skills;
• Fosters a collaborative knowledge sharing across organizational boundaries (“boundary spanning”); and
• Promotes and facilitates the capture and re-use of existing knowledge assets within the acquisition community.

Enabling Legislation:
The Office of Federal Procurement Policy (OFPP) is required, by the Service Acquisition Reform Act (SARA), Section 1431(b), to establish an Acquisition Center of Excellence (ACE) for Service Contracting. The purpose is to provide a central clearinghouse of service contracting best practices for both the public and private sectors.

Working Groups/Community/Points of Contact:
Working Groups
Community
Points of Contacts:
For information about the ACE for Services initiative, contact Julia Wise, Procurement Analyst on (202)395-7561 or submit an e-mail to julia_wise@omb.eop.gov. To contribute service contracting best practices information to the center, send the information in an e-mail to Jeffrey Birch, DAU Knowledge Project Officer, at jeffrey.birch@dau.mil.

Press Articles/Stories:
Federal Computer Week - Acquisition Clearinghouse Launches
Government Computer News - New portal gives agencies a hand in buying services
Govexec.com - Web site encourages exchange of acquisition 'best practices'