As part of a pilot project now underway, the service [US Army] is experimenting with bots that can scrape through the bills of materials (BOMs) that make up certain complex vendor proposals and make determinations about whether each of those line items’ proposed prices are realistic.
“We get these giant, 3,000-page BOM proposals, and we have little bots that go out and crawl the web, crawl Defense Logistics Agency systems, and they’re able to come back within minutes,” said Rebecca Weirick, the deputy secretary of the Army for procurement. “They’re doing what took our price analysts three or four months to analyze, get to prices paid, etc.”
That was from the Federal News Network article, “Bots starting to help DoD figure out right price for weapons systems.” Interesting throughout.
I wonder if this is a problem: Using bots to crawl through historical data presumes past DoD buys were already fair and reasonable.
Consider the errors it could create. Where DoD was overpaying, it will continue overpaying. Where DoD got a sweetheart deal — or where the bots lump together items of differing qualities and other particulars — those suppliers may refuse to sell. DoD may be left only with the “lemons” in terms of pricing, or it has to go back and investigate what has changed. But the point is that this error correction mechanism will only go one way.
DoD still buys a lot of commodities and so this automation of price reasonableness still makes a lot of sense, especially considering the cost of labor it currently takes to do the job.
This materials control analysis just one aspect of a larger “should cost” concept, which is interesting from an economic perspective. Because government’s own policies drive out competition, it is then forced to check on the productive efficiency of its suppliers. But how can government or third-party consultants, who don’t actually build things, expect to come in to direct the suppliers who have more knowledge? Unintended consequences are always lurking around the corner.
Leave a Reply