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17 USC 105 interim-entered record; under temporary embargo. ; U.S. Government affiliation is unstated in article text.

The article of record may be found at https://doi.org/10.1080/10242694.2018.1557974 ; The goal of any procurement process is to obtain 'value for money.' Bid protest systems are intended to help. The U.S. Department of Defense, NATO, the EU, UN, OECD, and WTO, all authorize losing bidders to protest public procurements. The threat of a protest is meant to increase government accountability, and encourage vendor participation. An extensive legal and regulatory literature discusses intended benefits of protests, but is surprisingly silent about the costs. The goal of this study is to examine both costs and benefits. Military acquisition offers an illustration. The dual objective is to minimize corruption, and maximize competition. Sadly, protest systems can inadvertently discourage both. Moreover, past protests by defense companies have generated signifi- cant costs, and triggered dangerous delays of critical defense equipment, materiel, services, and supplies required for national security. The static, probabilistic, micro-economic, partial equilibrium, representative bidder model presented in this paper offers a cautionary tale for defense organizations, government agencies, countries, and international institu- tions that authorize bid protests. The model reveals multiple potential deficiencies of protest systems, and recommends analysis of portfolios of alternatives to eliminate fraud and favoritism, and increase competition, to improve procurement outcomes.

Most countries allow disappointed bidders1 to protest public procurements. The dual goal is to reduce favoritism, reduce fraud and errors, and increase competition. The legal literature that underpins protest systems for the U.S. Federal Government and European Union generally reflects these two goals. The hypothesis is that allowing disappointed bidders to protest public procurements serves as a decentralized oversight mechanism that increases transparency and accountability, which encourages vendor participation. This study offers a cautionary tale for any government agency, country, or international institution that relies on, and/or promotes, bid protests to improve public procurement outcomes. The goal is to explore costs and benefits of bid protests for governments and taxpayers. As a first step, a probabilistic, micro-economic, partial equilibrium, representative bidder model is developed to help evaluate protest systems. The model reveals multiple unintended consequences of protest systems and suggests alternative approaches to improve public procurement outcomes.2 ; Naval Postgraduate School Acquisition Research Program

This study offers a comprehensive set of approaches for procurement officials to structure public investment decisions. Designed to improve acquisition outcomes, the Economic Evaluation of Alternatives (EEoA) addresses a significant weakness in most contemporary military applications of the current methodology--the Analysis of Alternatives (AoAs). While AoAs correctly focus on lifecycle costs and the operational effectiveness of alternatives, affordability is an after-thought--at best only implicitly addressed as a weight placed on cost in the final stages of the analysis. In sharp contrast, the EEoA encourages senior analysts and decision-makers to include affordability explicitly and up-front in structuring an AoA. This requires working with vendors to build alternatives based on a reasonable spectrum of possible funding (budget or affordability) scenarios. A key difference between traditional AoAs and the EEoA approach is that instead of modeling competing vendors as points in cost-effectiveness space, the EEoA solicits vendor proposals as functions of optimistic, pessimistic, and most-likely funding (budget) scenarios. The Decision Map offered in the concluding section of this study provides a comprehensive guide to EEoA for practitioners. This study also illustrates how, by embedding affordability directly into an AoA, the EEoA approach provides a unique opportunity for senior leadership to achieve a significant defense acquisition reform--to integrate Requirements Generation and Defense Acquisition with the Planning, Programming, and Budgeting System (PPBS), reducing future costs and improving performance and schedules. ; Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.

Concepts such as the Integrated Power System (IFS) and the DC Zonal Electric Distribution System (DC ZEDS) have motivated the study of power inverter control and paralleling strategies by the U.S. Navy. For example, in DC ZEDS a Ship Service Inverter Module (SSIM) converts DC power into AC power for use within a zone. For reasons of redundancy and logistics, multiple paralleled inverter submodules are used to implement the SSIM. The current effort supports ongoing SSIM hardware development by the SatCon Corporation. This report documents the modeling and control analysis of a set of parallel-connected PWM inverters. Although initially focusing on a static three-phase R-L load, the analysis is extended to three-phase symmetrical induction machine loads and three-phase round-rotor permanent-magnet synchronous machine loads. In each case, an algorithm for designing the local inner current control is developed by employing reference frame theory, replacing the paralleled inverters by an equivalent unit, and executing a nonlinear pole-placement strategy. Upon reviewing the equations necessary for AC machine vector control, the report concludes by documenting the analysis and design of a simple speed control loop for this aformentioned machine loads. ; This report was sponsored by the Naval Surface Warfare Center Carderock Division ; Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.

Sponsored Report (for Acquisition Research Program) ; This study offers a comprehensive set of approaches for procurement officials to structure public investment decisions. Designed to improve acquisition outcomes, the ''Economic Evaluation of Alternatives'' (EEoA) addresses a significant weakness in most contemporary military applications of the current methodology''the Analysis of Alternatives (AoAs). While AoAs correctly focus on lifecycle costs and the operational effectiveness of alternatives, ''affordability'' is an after-thought''at best only implicitly addressed as a weight placed on cost in the final stages of the analysis. In sharp contrast, the EEoA encourages senior analysts and decision-makers to include affordability explicitly and up-front in structuring an AoA. This requires working with vendors to build alternatives based on a reasonable spectrum of possible funding (budget or affordability) scenarios. A key difference between traditional AoAs and the EEoA approach is that instead of modeling competing vendors as points in cost-effectiveness space, the EEoA solicits vendor proposals as functions of optimistic, pessimistic, and most-likely funding (budget) scenarios. The Decision Map offered in the concluding section of this study provides a comprehensive guide to EEoA for practitioners. This study also illustrates how, by embedding affordability directly into an AoA, the EEoA approach provides a unique opportunity for senior leadership to achieve a significant defense acquisition reform''to integrate Requirements Generation and Defense Acquisition with the Planning, Programming, and Budgeting System (PPBS), reducing future costs and improving performance and schedules. ; Naval Postgraduate School Acquisition Research Program ; Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.

The US Director of National Intelligence recently told Congress the economic crisis has replaced terrorism as 'the primary near-term security concern,' but what he failed to mention is how eerily similar this crisis is to a terrorist attack. The economic and security implications for NATO and its partners are staggering, with two key challenges for the Alliance: first, a drop in defense spending and second, drawing the right lessons from the crisis. Figures. Adapted from the source document.

The objective of this paper is to model a new incentive structure for government activities that rewards cost-savings and efficiencies. The model combines "cost-based pricing" (see Pavia [1995]) with the popular business practice of "gain-sharing" (see Welbourne & Mejia [1995]), and a new incentive program we call "success-sharing".

17 USC 105 interim-entered record; under review. ; The article of record as published may be found at https://doi.org/10.1080/10242694.2020.1808939 ; This paper offers an economic model to assist public procurement officials to rank competing vendors when benefits cannot be monetized. An important defense application is 'source selection' – choosing the most cost-effective vendor to supply military equipment, facilities, services or supplies. The problem of ranking public investment alternatives when benefits cannot be monetized has spawned an extensive literature that underpins widely applied decision tools. The bulk of the literature, and most government-mandated decision tools, focus on the demand side of a public procurement. The 'Economic Evaluation of Alternatives' (EEoA) extends the analysis to the supply side. A unique feature of EEoA is to model vendor decisions in response to government funding projections. Given a parsimonious set of continuously differentiable evaluation criteria, EEoA provides a new tool to rank vendors. In other cases, it offers a valuable consistency check to guide government supplier decisions. ; U.S. Government affiliation is unstated in article text.