VAO Executive Roundtable. October 27, 2026
The invite-only VAO Executive Retreat brings senior acquisition leaders together at the Willard Intercontinental in Washington, DC for a closed-door discussion about turning direction into results. Across three sessions, leaders will examine how agencies are redesigning their acquisition operating models, putting RFO changes into practice, and deciding what to centralize without losing connection to the mission.
Under Chatham House Rules, the conversation will focus on real agency actions, results, resistance, and lessons learned, giving attendees practical insight they can take back to their own organizations.
Turning Direction Into Results: The Hard Decisions Behind Acquisition Change
Explore what is working, where friction remains, and how leaders are helping acquisition teams move forward with more clarity, confidence, and control in the following panels.
Today's acquisition teams must move faster, apply commercial judgment, and work seamlessly across program, legal, finance, and technology all while using data and automation well. Yet many organizations are still weighed down by handoffs, layered reviews, and outdated decision rights.
In this session, agency leaders share how they redesigned the work, what moved closer to customers, what got centralized or automated, where authority was delegated, and what contracting officers still own. They'll discuss the results, the resistance they faced, and what they'd do differently.
The Revolutionary FAR Overhaul is moving through rulemaking, and leaders have been busy changing strategies, templates, approvals, controls, and workforce guidance while deviations remain in place and proposed rules evolve. Panelists will compare where they moved quickly, how the RFO has change how they work or allowed for increased innovation, where they held back, what they learned from live procurements, and how they are balancing flexibility with consistent, defensible execution.
Centralization can increase buying power, reduce duplication, and improve visibility. It can also move decisions too far from the mission and add friction. As GSA expands OneGov and shared acquisition services like OCAS, agency leaders will explain what they centralized, what they kept close to customers, how they managed the transition, and where the model created more work. The discussion will focus on mission impact, speed, cost, customer experience, and accountability.