Center for Government Contracting Commentaries

Recently, I had the opportunity to speak with the Senior Vice President for Contracts and Pricing at a major government contracting firm and her team about commercial buying. The conversation reinforced a point that is easy to miss in policy discussions: commercial solutions require commercial behavior. That means government must be willing to engage the market differently, and industry must be willing to explain, candidly and constructively, what commercial buying entails. Without that mutual adjustment, commercial acquisitions risk remaining a policy imperative rather than becoming a practical success for both sides.

Federal News Network, The Federal Drive with Terry Gerton with Emily Murphy, senior fellow, Baroni Center for Government Contracting

Dr. Jerry McGinn, Executive Director of the Baroni Center for Government Contracting at George Mason University &1698198534253-2 Former Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, offers a candid and data-driven look at the current state of innovation across the federal government. With a background in both academia and senior leadership at the Department of Defense, McGinn brings unique insight into how the government is leveraging its power—not just to regulate, but to actively shape—its industrial base.

The defense industrial base is "not a simple false dichotomy between the industrial titans that have powered American defense for decades and the innovative trailblazers from Silicon Valley and Austin," writes Jeff Kojac in this op-ed.

The Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and numerous executive orders and Congress’s FoRGED and SPEED Acts have similar laudable objectives. How can they achieve breakthrough success?

Part of the answer is to create better measurements to assess progress toward desired objectives. With that goal in mind, our 2025 Government Contracting Trends and Performance Index examined the shape of the broad industrial base that supports all Federal government agencies, trends in government contracting, and the self-evaluated financial performance of government contracting firms.

New research from the Baroni Center for Government Contracting at the George Mason University shows the industrial base and competition are healthy.

"There's a lot more emphasis on team-based approach to developing requirements. A lot more collaboration," Emily Murphy said.

It is vital that Congress act this year to pass a five-year DPA reauthorization that refocuses the authority on urgent national security needs and strengthens our industrial base to prepare for threats from China and other adversaries. I was honored to testify before the Senate Banking Committee recently on this issue, and it was incredibly heartening to hear the strong bipartisan consensus for DPA reauthorization.

Jerry McGinn, Ph.D. testified before the United States Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs for the reauthorization of the Defense Production Act.

Richard Beutel, a senior researcher for the Baroni Center for Government Contracting, says it’s time to renew share-in-savings legislation.