In this episode we feature ACT-IAC’s Acquisition and Innovation Forum's keynote fireside chat with Ann Marie Johnson and OMB/OFPP’s Mathew Blum on the Revolutionary FAR Overhaul (RFO) to restore common sense, put mission first, and shift from compliance to empowered business judgment. Blum explains the executive order’s call for a simpler, clearer FAR structured for speed and describes streamlining the FAR to statutory roots, including deviations that reduced the FAR by about 25%. They discuss change management, learning resources, and mission measures of success, speed, reduced cost, and competition, including small business participation, and how AI could improve information access, accelerate tasks, lower costs, and help buyers find existing contract vehicles.

Summary - A Hole in One with ACT-IAC

Voyagers Program | ACT-IAC

https://www.actiac.org/act-iac-event/fellows-friends-day-domaine-fortier

Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform to never miss an episode! For more from ACT-IAC, follow us on LinkedIn or visit http://www.actiac.org.

Learn more about membership at https://www.actiac.org/join.
Donate to ACT-IAC at https://actiac.org/donate.

Intro/Outro Music: See a Brighter Day/Gloria Tells
Courtesy of Epidemic Sound

(Episodes 1-159: Intro/Outro Music: Focal Point/Young Community
Courtesy of Epidemic Sound)

In this episode we feature ACT-IAC’s Acquisition and Innovation Forum's
Lunch & Keynote Fireside Chat between Geoff Edwards and NASA Financial Systems Office Director Chi Okonkwo, who shares her career path from consulting to OPM modernization and then NASA. Okonkwo explains how NASA finance and acquisitions are modernizing legacy systems together, shifting the CFO role from retrospective reporting toward real-time analytics and performance insights, and pursuing responsible AI for future financial, budgeting, and risk needs, including fraud, waste, and abuse detection. She reflects on major NASA transformations, including the post-shuttle workforce realignment, commercialization partnerships, and implementing SAP with sustained clean audit opinions. Okonkwo emphasizes iterative modernization, governance, resilience, and leadership transparency, and advises prioritizing relationships and collaboration, including through ACT-IAC programs.

Summary - A Hole in One with ACT-IAC

https://www.actiac.org/act-iac-event/fellows-friends-day-domaine-fortier

Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform to never miss an episode! For more from ACT-IAC, follow us on LinkedIn or visit http://www.actiac.org.

Learn more about membership at https://www.actiac.org/join.
Donate to ACT-IAC at https://actiac.org/donate.

Intro/Outro Music: See a Brighter Day/Gloria Tells
Courtesy of Epidemic Sound

(Episodes 1-159: Intro/Outro Music: Focal Point/Young Community
Courtesy of Epidemic Sound)

At an ACT-IAC panel on moving from fragmented to frictionless, unified customer experiences, SSA’s Michelle Liu explains SSA’s Service Index, a framework and catalog mapping services across online, phone/IVR, and in-person channels to customer journeys, data, and processes to identify dead ends, gaps, and priorities. She illustrates friction with an SSI address-change journey that fails online and in IVR, forcing repeat intent/authentication and eventual field-office completion, and shows how the index supports channel parity, policy review (e.g., questioning unnecessary in-person SSI return-to-U.S. requirements), call routing, content alignment, and LLM-based call categorization (e.g., why customers call for tasks available online).

Summary - A Hole in One with ACT-IAC

Voyagers Program | ACT-IAC

https://www.actiac.org/act-iac-event/fellows-friends-day-domaine-fortier

Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform to never miss an episode! For more from ACT-IAC, follow us on LinkedIn or visit http://www.actiac.org.

Learn more about membership at https://www.actiac.org/join.
Donate to ACT-IAC at https://actiac.org/donate.

Intro/Outro Music: See a Brighter Day/Gloria Tells
Courtesy of Epidemic Sound

(Episodes 1-159: Intro/Outro Music: Focal Point/Young Community
Courtesy of Epidemic Sound)