One of the biggest challenges facing the 45th president will be how its administration acquires goods and services.
Apart from trying to reform an acquisition process that is seen as cumbersome, the Trump administration will also have to decide its commitment to ongoing initiatives like category management, 18F and the Technology Transformation Service.
"There’s always going to be at the end of an administration unfinished business that you hope the next administration continues," said Mallory Barg Bulman, director of research and evaluation for The Partnership for Public Service.
"Most of the next administration’s early wins will come from things that are already underway from this administration. If I were on a transition team, I would be looking at things that are currently underway and succeeding and try to find how I can replicate them."
Issues like category management and new contract vehicles will likely be embraced, but the regulation landscape is primed for a certain shift.
While the Obama administration favored recent initiatives to make the acquisition process easier to navigate, it also issued new regulations in a slate of executive orders that expanded reporting and paid leave requirements for federal contractors.
President-elect Trump will certainly claw back many of those executive orders. In fact, Trump’s "Contract with the American Voter," campaign platform offers to reduce twice as many regulations as it plans to craft.
Alan Chvotkin, executive vice president and counsel of the Professional Services Council, said that acquisition spending will be further compromised by ongoing budget battles on Capitol Hill.
"I suspect looking for ways to find the resources that are going to be necessary to fulfill their immediate and longer term campaign promises is going to be a very significant challenge," he said.
Another issue the administration will have to tackle is the use of OMB Circular No. A-76, which determines how the government should contract out for certain services.
The Obama administration had favored retaining services within the federal government, or in-sourcing, rather than using contractors to provide them.
Don Kettl, a professor at the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy and a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said whether Trump continues to use the Obama playbook on in-sourcing could be an early indication of the acquisition climate.
"There are Republicans that are very unhappy with what they view as the in-sourcing initiative of the Obama administration," he said. "I would expect that Trump would move more aggressively toward competitive sourcing and more contracting out."
