The Standard Procurement System (SPS) is a

software Software consists of computer programs that instruct the Execution (computing), execution of a computer. Software also includes design documents and specifications. The history of software is closely tied to the development of digital comput ...

suite developed during the 1990s, which provides front-office business services for acquisition professionals in the

United States Department of Defense The United States Department of Defense (DoD, USDOD, or DOD) is an United States federal executive departments, executive department of the federal government of the United States, U.S. federal government charged with coordinating and superv ...

Program History

SPS is an outgrowth of the DoD Corporate Information Management (CIM) initiatives in the early 1990s, and is intended to provide standard business processes and data management across disparate acquisition communities, including: * Posts, camps, and stations * Inventory Control Points * Major Weapon Systems * Contingency contracting The Standard Procurement System initiative began in 1994 with a directive from the Director of Defense Procurement to standardize the then approximately 70 acquisition systems in use on a single platform. In August 1996, the SPS contract was awarded through a competitive process to

American Management Systems American Management Systems, Inc., was a high-technology and management consulting firm, founded in 1970 by a group of five former United States Department of Defense, Defense Department officials who had worked under Robert McNamara in the John F ...

. The contract directed AMS to build the Standard Procurement System through an incremental process on top of the company's existing Procurement Desktop - Defense (PD²) application. SPS is one of the first DoD software acquisitions using

Federal Acquisition Regulation The Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) is the principal set of rules regarding Government procurement in the United States. The document describes the procedures executive branch agencies use for acquiring products and services. FAR is part o ...

(FAR) Part 12 - Acquisition of Commercial Items rules. One of the major drivers behind SPS was the use of

Commercial off-the-shelf Commercial-off-the-shelf or commercially available off-the-shelf (COTS) products are packaged or canned (ready-made) hardware or software, which are adapted aftermarket to the needs of the purchasing organization, rather than the commissioning of ...

, or

COTS COTS may refer to: * Commercial off-the-shelf, products that are commercially available and can be bought "as is" * Commercial Orbital Transportation Services, a NASA program for delivery to the International Space Station by private companies * ...

, software. The software is

licensed A license (American English) or licence (Commonwealth English) is an official permission or permit to do, use, or own something (as well as the document of that permission or permit). A license is granted by a party (licensor) to another part ...

rather than purchased outright, and at the time marked a major shift in acquisition strategy for DoD. While DoD had previous experience in licensing software, it largely revolved around either

desktop computing A desktop computer, often abbreviated as desktop, is a personal computer designed for regular use at a stationary location on or near a desk (as opposed to a portable computer) due to its size and power requirements. The most common configuratio ...

(

operating systems An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

office automation Office automation refers to the varied computer machinery and software used to digitally create, collect, store, manipulate, and relay office information needed for accomplishing basic tasks. Raw data storage, electronic transfer, and the manageme ...

products, etc.) or back-end servers (

mainframe A mainframe computer, informally called a mainframe or big iron, is a computer used primarily by large organizations for critical applications like bulk data processing for tasks such as censuses, industry and consumer statistics, enterpris ...

relational database management systems A relational database (RDB) is a database based on the relational model of data, as proposed by E. F. Codd in 1970. A Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) is a type of database management system that stores data in a structured form ...

, etc.). SPS is a business system and is licensed for 43,000 contracting officers and other acquisition professionals at DoD sites world-wide. The deployment of SPS met with several challenges, including a stop-development order in 2002 from the US

Government Accountability Office The United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) is an independent, nonpartisan government agency within the legislative branch that provides auditing, evaluative, and investigative services for the United States Congress. It is the s ...

(GAO). The program resumed after establishing an internal requirements board, automating its integration capabilities, improving product documentation, and implementing a shift from a client-server architecture to a Web application architecture. By 2008, SPS had been deployed on more than 23,000 desktops worldwide, and processed more than $131 billion in

fiscal year A fiscal year (also known as a financial year, or sometimes budget year) is used in government accounting, which varies between countries, and for budget purposes. It is also used for financial reporting by businesses and other organizations. La ...

(FY) 2006, up from $59.0 billion in FY 2004 In 2020, the DoD Standard Procurement System (SPS), deployed using the Procurement Desktop-Defense (PD2) application was still widely in use by many agencies, although the change in technology environment and age led to intent to sunset, which was pushed out to at least 2020.

Acknowledgement

The SPS program has received several awards, including the Top Fed 100 award from ''

Federal Computer Week ''Nextgov/FCW'' (launched as ''Federal Computer Week'' and later rebranded ''FCW'') is a news website that covers U.S. federal government technology and occasionally state, local, tribal and international governments. It is owned by GovExec. Fede ...

'' (2003), the Grace Hopper Technology Leadership Award (2003), and ''

CIO Magazine ''CIO'' is a magazine related to technology and IT. The magazine was founded in 1987 and is now entirely digital. The name refers to the job title chief information officer. ''CIO'' is part of Boston-based International Data Group's enterprise ...

s CIO Enterprise Value Award (2005).

External links

Standard Procurement System Home Page

Standard Procurement System

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Standard Procurement System, The Government software Federal government of the United States United States defense procurement