Army rolls out new contract writing system

FORT BELVOIR, Va. — U.S. Army Program Executive Office for Enterprise Information Systems, recently launched the Army Contract Writing System, a platform designed to provide the Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Procurement with a single enterprise writing and management system to streamline the Army contracting process.

The initial user group includes 104 contracting personnel at 29 locations including Army Contracting Command-Joint Base Lewis-McChord and offices across the Army National Guard who will provide feedback on the system prior to the next release.

“We’re proud to provide significantly improved integrated contract writing capabilities for the contracting workforce, enabling them to work faster and more efficiently to help the Army meet its mission,” said Megan Dake, DASA for Procurement. “We owe our teammates this, and we’ll continue to get feedback and work with the product manager to improve the system as more capability is rolled out to larger organization.”

During this initial deployment, the ACWS will enable users to:

• Generate solicitation, award and modification documents in Uniform Contract Format
• Generate Procurement Data Standard-compliant transactions
• Import vendors from the System for Award Management
• Link to the Procurement Integrated Enterprise Environment Clause Logic Service to complete required clause interviews
• Receive purchase requests from the Defense Enterprise Accounting and Management System
• Connect to the Federal Procurement Data System to complete contract action reports

The next rollout of ACWS, which will include approximately 350 additional users from Army Contracting Command and the Army National Guard, is planned for the first quarter of fiscal year 2024. ACWS will eventually replace the Standard Procurement System/Procurement Desktop-Defense and the Procurement Automated Data and Document System.

“This marks the beginning of a new era of Army contract writing,” said Steve Edsall, ACWS product lead at PEO EIS. “We’re leveraging existing technologies and maximizing shareability and reuse across the DOD.”

ACWS partnered with the Defense Logistics Agency to host and manage the software environment, providing significant cost savings for the program. This strategy also enables future opportunities for shared capability development with the Navy, Air Force and DLA – and provides an opportunity to replace legacy systems earlier.

“The ACWS team is excited about this accomplishment,” said Edsall, adding that the team will continue to deliver more capabilities and functions in future iterations.

Users can look forward to the system’s integration with the Virtual Contracting Enterprise and other financial systems, including the General Fund Enterprise Business System, Corps of Engineers Financial Management System and the Logistics Modernization Program. Future capabilities will include the ability to use the Construction Specifications Institute contract format, the awarding of grants, cooperative agreements and major systems procurements, and secure contracting capabilities. The entire ACWS team has fully embraced the Agile methodology that will be used to enhance the system over time.

“I’m proud to share that ACWS is one of the early adopters of Agile at PEO EIS,” said Kevin Curry, project manager for the Defense Integrated Business Systems portfolio, which oversees ACWS. “As ACWS moves forward, the team will work closely with the functional community, our technical integration provider and other partners to incrementally add functionality, when relevant and ready.”