Official website of the Department of Homeland Security
Acquisition Innovations in Motion (AIiM)
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has developed a series of initiatives, industry engagement events and conversations focused on reciprocal learning between DHS and private industry. Please note that the calendar included in this document is a notional calendar intended to show the types of events and general timeframe during which they will occur. This document will be updated quarterly, and the events are subject to change. For detailed information on specific events, please monitor www.fbo.gov.
The Procurement Innovation Lab
The DHS Procurement Innovation Lab (PIL) is a component of AIiM. The PIL is a virtual lab that experiments with innovative techniques for increasing efficiencies in the procurement process and institutionalizing best practices. It serves as a unique test environment for exploring and refining innovations in acquisition and gives teams an opportunity to showcase success stories to the DHS acquisition community.
Webinars and an internal website are used to spread lessons learned. The webinars cover the latest procurement innovation topics such as the TechFAR or Digital Services Playbook, and also showcase actual PIL case studies. In addition to saving the Department time and money, the PIL helps to create a learning culture that enhances support to the DHS mission.
An important part of the PIL is a reciprocal learning and continuous feedback loop. After a contract award, the PIL project team reaches out to offerors, both successful and disappointed, and the program office, and conducts oral interviews to assess effectiveness of the procurement process and the innovative techniques applied. The anonymous feedback is then shared with the procurement team to promote lessons learned, which are disseminated to the DHS workforce via webinars.
On March 9, 2016, the White House cited the PIL’s innovative work when it announced a new initiative to accelerate the establishment of Acquisition Innovation Labs in Federal agencies.
