The Department of Veterans Affairs is “playing catch-up” to agencies such as the National Institutes of Health in automating its acquisition processes, according to its chief acquisition officer…

The VA launched the Pathfinder procurement intelligence system for internal and industry use in June, but NIH is further along in using ML to create repositories of old contract data almost instantly. Parrish said he has found the primary barriers to be the VA’s lack of properly formatted contract data and need for zero-trust security around the information…

NIH uses ML to identify what it’s buying, communicate that with both the government and industry, and improve contract efficiency based on the insights garnered, said Ricky Clark, deputy director of the NIH IT Acquisition and Assessment Center.

Meanwhile, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Department of Health and Human Services more broadly, are evaluating the use of bots to assist with contract closeouts. HHS had about 97,000 contracts in need of closeout at one point, said Andrew Jernell, director of the Division of IT Acquisitions… Read the full article here.