DHS FLASH was a grand experiment to develop a truly agile software development contract for all of the Department of Homeland Security. It was impressive in scale ($1.5b) and its innovative prototype-based competition model. 111 firms put in proposals and 11 were successful.

Unfortunately, the contract was cancelled after a protest process. However, procurement and contracting are perhaps the biggest constraint to improving IT delivery for government.

This panel examines this experience to discuss what happened, what went well, and what could be improved. Members of successful FLASH awardee teams will discuss the experience and process, then facilitate a discussion of how to make this model work.

Note: the panel members will be refined in prep for the session. At a minimum, we can get some diversity of vendor participants from winning teams - and would welcome government-side participants as well.