Charles Lyons-Burt
Executive Mosaic is ecstatic to recognize Department of Homeland Security Chief Procurement Officer Paul Courtney with the 2024 Wash100 Award. Courtney, a first-time Wash100 awardee, earns the recognition due to his growth-minded leadership of DHS acquisition activities, which upholds a commitment to fostering private sector collaboration.
Now that the full Wash100 list is available, the popular vote contest has begun. Vote for your 10 favorite GovCon fixtures at Wash100.com!
The Wash100 Award every year assembles an elite list of the most essential names in government contracting. EM’s selection committee spends the months leading up to the announcement surveying the government contracting landscape to determine the most influential individuals poised to deliver the best results in the year ahead. Winners evincing first-class innovation, vision and reliability are identified in both the industrial base and in government and military.
“DHS is tasked with the monumental mission of securing the nation and safeguarding our citizens. As chief procurement officer, Paul leads the agency’s efforts to acquire the best-in-class technologies, solutions and services that can carry out our most important homeland security missions in today’s complex global environment,” said Jim Garrettson, CEO of Executive Mosaic and founder of the Wash100 Award.
“We applaud Paul’s innovation, and we’re proud to add him to the 2024 Wash100 list,” Garrettson continued.
Courtney is a career acquisition professional importing decades of experience overseeing agency procurement efforts to DHS, where he was appointed deputy CPO in 2019. He ascended to his current role in 2021.
Previously, he facilitated contracting activities at the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Defense Intelligence Agency, with his first training in the field conducted at the Department of Justice. At the FBI, Courtney had oversight of $4 billion in goods and services agreements and effectively dissolved the now-antiquated lowest price technically accepted contracting method. He also authorized a new vendor method for the organization.
Now, at DHS, he is directing a yearly spend upwards of $25 billion on contract awards to industry.
“I am a huge advocate for partnership and collaboration. It really is the core of what we do and how we do it,” Courtney stated at the Potomac Officers Club’s Homeland Security Forum in February 2023.
At the event, Courtney enumerated the four tenets of running a powerhouse procurement operation as empowerment, collaboration, innovation and, naturally, procurement. He said these aspects could not be completed without meaningful collaboration between both different offices within DHS and with industry.
“We really want to have those conversations with the folks who own the requirements and hear it from them firsthand. We believe that we have learned best together, and that consistent industry engagement is a process,” Courtney remarked.
During both the February forum and POC’s November 2023 Homeland Security Summit, Courtney placed an emphasis on small business contracting, sharing that nearly half of the agency’s acquisition spend — amounting to $10 billion — in the prior fiscal year was with small businesses.
He told the summit audience about the agency’s Matchmaking program, which works to facilitate dialogues between larger sized vendors and small businesses. In February 2023, Courtney spoke to Federal News Network about DHS’ FirstSource III contract, a potential $10 billion multiple-award vehicle for software and information technology products geared toward small businesses.
“Our whole team is ready to award this and move forward and just want to make sure we do it right and make sure we have a great pool of vendors at the end of the day supporting our FirstSource III contracts,” he said at the time.
Executive Mosaic sends its utmost congratulations to Courtney and his team at DHS and looks forward to his achievements in the coming year.
