William McCormick
Jerry McGinn, executive director of GMU’s Center for Government Contracting and a key member of Executive Mosaic’s GovCon Expert program, has been named a 2022 Wash100 Award recipient for his vision and leadership in the expansion of the George Mason University (GMU) School of Business’ Center for Government Contracting as well as driving advocacy for the government contracting (GovCon) sector and DoD’s defense acquisition system changes.
Executive Mosaic is pleased to recognize GovCon Expert Jerry McGinn as a two-time winner of the most prestigious award in all of government contracting (GovCon). Previously, McGinn was presented his first Wash100 Award for his insight into the critical issues impacting the GovCon industry and the defense-industrial base (DIB) in 2021.
Visit Wash100.com to cast a vote for GovCon Expert Jerry McGinn as one of your TEN votes to advocate for your favorite leaders in the federal and government sectors.
As last year came to a close, the GMU School of Business’ Center for Government Contracting has released its 2021 Report detailing its achievements with McGinn highlighting a tremendous year of growth for the Center as well as its DoD-funded research studies in areas such as defense finance, pricing, small business, and intellectual property.
While COVID continues to affect us all, we are grateful that our work is becoming more and more impactful in the government contracting community,” Jerry McGinn explained. “As we conclude our third program year, we have continued to focus around our three lines of effort: research, education & training, and collaboration.”
GMU’s Center for Government Contracting also announced new researchers were joining the program to support ongoing and future projects back in Nov. 2021, including former GSA Administrator Hon. Emily Murphy, a fellow GovCon Expert for Executive Mosaic and a three-time Wash100 recipient.
The Center also appointed Benjamin McMartin and Richard Beutel as well as fellows David Peeler and Dolores Kuchina-Musina and Olivia Letts and Anthony Vatterott as research associates.
In his statement on the new hires, Jerry McGinn expressed his enthusiasm for their contributions to continue growing the university’s focus on addressing the important challenges facing the GovCon community today.
Most recently, the Center released a playbook called “Acquisition Next” in order to advance any necessary changes in acquisition approach and mindset to ensure that the defense acquisition system can maintain its advantage over strategic competitors like Russia and China.
“We worked to identify the practices that acquisition professionals and their industry counterparts can use now to innovate, iterate, scale, and field effective military capabilities for United States forces,” said McGinn.
The playbook suggests six plays designed to drive modularity, iteration, competition and speed in defense acquisition and the first three plays at the program level apply to all types of systems: requirements, market research and master the baseline.
McGinn emphasized that the three areas to focus on are based around software intensive content, which includes agile work statements, modular contracts and intellectual property. “Many of these practices are being used in programs, but widespread adoption will help drive culture change across the acquisition community,” he explained.
In addition, McGinn also highlighted that the “top-down process” utilized by the Department of Defense (DoD) relies too heavily on the current U.S. budgetary system and advanced planning that spans years into the future over the commercial industry’s approach that provides a greater flexibility based on portfolio management.
McGinn argued that DoD is less primed to respond to evolving technologies or new threats that may develop due to its current PPBE processes, especially with new systems such as Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) that will require a budgeting approach involving modularity, iteration and speed.
“Be bold in vision. Be focused in approach and be pragmatic in implementation,” McGinn added. McGinn believes these steps to be crucial in evolving the U.S.’s resource allocation process in order to meet possible threats head-on and keep pace with technological advances.
Executive Mosaic is proud to recognize Jerry McGinn and GMU’s Center for Government Contracting for being named a 2022 Wash100 Award recipient. As a repeat winner of the most coveted award in GovCon, McGinn has demonstrated an elite level of success, achievement and contribution to the GovCon community that can only be recognized by the Wash100 Award.
