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Acquisition Research Sponsored Report Series for the Graduate School of Business & Public Policy. ; Sound market research is the foundation of effective acquisition decisions and processes. However, this axiom appears to be undervalued in the government procurement domain. While agencies are responsible for conducting market research appropriate to the procurement situation, very little guidance is available to assist acquisition personnel to meet the intent of the FAR. The FAR offers little direction; Parts 10 and 12 dedicate a mere 1,477 words to the topic of market research. Existing market research guides are outdated do not emphasize efficient outcomes, and do not address market research needed to support strategic sourcing. The government?s current approach to market research is ad hoc, inconsistent, and redundant since information is rarely shared between buying activities. Additionally, no existing research or policy addresses how to properly organize or resource the collection and use of market research. Furthermore, specific skills for determining needed information, finding it, analyzing it, and disseminating it are not systematically taught or developed in the government?s acquisition workforce. Many commercial best practices (e.g., industry analysis and a purchasing portfolio matrix) that are transferrable to the not-for-profit sector are absent. Each of these tools is essential to designing the optimal contract that reaps the most value from the exchange. Therefore, this market intelligence guide is developed to address the aforementioned deficiencies in an effort to provide acquisition personnel practical guidance on conducting meaningful market research. It is targeted toward strategic sourcing and complex, high-value federal procurements.

Peace in the Middle East is the ever-elusive holy grail of diplomacy, a goal that much of the wider world fervently wishes to achieve. Modern efforts to achieve a formal, broad-based set of peace treaties between Israel and its various Arab neighbors, as well as a solution to the Palestinian homeland question, have ultimately foundered after some early promise and hard-won negotiating breakthroughs. Entrenched political interests, lack of good faith and mutual trust, domestic security concerns, and popular opposition have generated headwinds and a blame game too powerful to overcome. The full range of proposals, opinions, and analysis across the long history of the peace effort is contained here, allowing readers to survey the process and evaluate its competing agendas and debates

AbstractIntroductionAs prevalence of undiagnosed HIV declines, it is unclear whether testing programmes will be cost‐effective. To guide their HIV testing programmes, countries require appropriate metrics that can be measured. The cost‐per‐diagnosis is potentially a useful metric.MethodsWe simulated a series of setting‐scenarios for adult HIV epidemics and ART programmes typical of settings in southern Africa using an individual‐based model and projected forward from 2018 under two policies: (i) a minimum package of "core" testing (i.e. testing in pregnant women, for diagnosis of symptoms, in sex workers, and in men coming forward for circumcision) is conducted, and (ii) core‐testing as above plus additional testing beyond this ("additional‐testing"), for which we specify different rates of testing and various degrees to which those with HIV are more likely to test than those without HIV. We also considered a plausible range of unit test costs. The aim was to assess the relationship between cost‐per‐diagnosis and the incremental cost‐effectiveness ratio (ICER) of the additional‐testing policy. The discount rate used in the base case was 3% per annum (costs in 2018 U.S. dollars).ResultsThere was a strong graded relationship between the cost‐per‐diagnosis and the ICER. Overall, the ICER was below $500 per‐DALY‐averted (the cost‐effectiveness threshold used in primary analysis) so long as the cost‐per‐diagnosis was below $315. This threshold cost‐per‐diagnosis was similar according to epidemic and programmatic features including the prevalence of undiagnosed HIV, the HIV incidence and a measure of HIV programme quality (the proportion of HIV diagnosed people having a viral load <1000 copies/mL). However, restricting to women, additional‐testing did not appear cost‐effective even at a cost‐per‐diagnosis of below $50, while restricting to men additional‐testing was cost‐effective up to a cost‐per‐diagnosis of $585. The threshold cost per diagnosis for testing in men to be cost‐effective fell to $256 when the cost‐effectiveness threshold was $300 instead of $500, and to $81 when considering a discount rate of 10% per annum.ConclusionsFor testing programmes in low‐income settings in southern African there is an extremely strong relationship between the cost‐per‐diagnosis and the cost‐per‐DALY averted, indicating that the cost‐per‐diagnosis can be used to monitor the cost‐effectiveness of testing programmes.