The Virtual Procurement Office.

The growth of the Internet in the last five years has been nothing short of phenomenal. It has been compared in importance to the Industrial Revolution, and a revolution it certainly is. The amount of information available on even the most arcane subject can be overwhelming. For example, a search on the word procurement using a major search engine yielded more than 5,000 hits in the .gov domain alone. Internet sites abound that contain information about laws, Office of Management and Budget circulars, Office of Federal Procurement Policy policy letters, the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR), FAR supplements, handbooks, guides, and agency and installation guidance.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) also has created more Internet tools so users now must keep track of more browser bookmarks and new acronyms. NASA has not only added new agencywide applications but also various NASA centers have been adding their own tools on an almost daily basis. For example, each Center has an online NASA procurement library, a NASA Acquisition Internet Service (NAIS) library, and a general procurement library. NASA Procurement Library on the Internet provides hundreds if not thousands of documents, links, and references. When one considers this abundance along with various initiatives such as 150 9000 certification, the expression "choked on documentation and starved for information" comes to mind.

In addition to Internet-related issues, several other factors motivated NASA to take a fresh approach to the contracting process. Downsizing over the last few years significantly reduced the contracting workforce, particularly in the support area. Not as many of the "old pros" remain to provide guidance, so the workforce needed a new way to share corporate knowledge. Contract specialists typically do a wider variety of tasks than they …