David Eaves Photo

David Eaves

Lecturer in Public Policy
Office Address
79 John F. Kennedy St. Brattle Sq 1, HKS 478
Eaves, David. "Don't Believe the Hype: Procurement Reform is a Red Herring!" FCW (Federal Computer Week). June 5, 2017.


During the launch of Healthcare.gov, media coverage centered around poor procurement as a contributing cause of the failure. It's a widely held sentiment. If you hang around the govtech sector - people interested in starting tech companies that serve government, my friends over at Code for America and industry commentators - procurement is often cited as the big bad bogeyman holding us back. If only we fixed procurement, there would be more choice, better vendors and less failure among government IT projects. I don't buy it.