FORT BELVOIR, Va. –
Senior leaders from the Defense Logistics Agency and Veterans Health Administration signed an interagency agreement for healthcare support at DLA Headquarters March 12.
The interagency agreement formalizes a partnership documenting the general terms and conditions agreement, aligning supply chain requirements and centralizing logistical support to all VHA healthcare facilities nationwide.
G-Invoicing is a United States Treasury-mandated solution to improve the quality of intragovernmental buying and selling data across the federal government. Prior to the G-Invoicing mandate, agreements were not required for orders between federal trading partners, enabling them to submit multiple military intergovernmental purchase requests whenever a need arose. With the new G-Invoicing requirement, these orders must directly reference an “open” agreement in the Treasury online repository.
“At the start, customers were submitting a new agreement every time they submitted a new order, which created additional lead time in getting the support they needed,” said Maxwell Walens, the DLA Finance’s General Terms and Conditions Center of Excellence branch chief.
DLA’s Deputy Director of Logistics Operations Kristin French, VHA’s Deputy Assistant Under Secretary for Health for Support Ronald Miller and DLA’s Deputy Chief Financial Officer Shawn Lennon signed a 10-year, $3.6 billion, Level 2 interagency agreement.
“The Veteran Affairs primary mission is to provide world-class care to our nation’s veterans. Having this agreement with the agency, frees VHA to continue focusing on their core mission as DLA provides additional logistics resources,” said Hadiza Abdullah-Bello, DLA’s liaison to Veteran Affairs. “In the past, the VA had an expressed interest in using DLA Disposition Services for their disposal needs, requiring a single agreement with them. With this new agreement in place, VHA can now request goods and services from all our supply chains whenever the need arises.”
Abdullah-Bello said DLA and VHA signed an agreement in 2018 to use DLA Troop Support’s Medical supply chain’s electronic catalog for medical supplies. The following year, DLA and VA signed a memorandum of agreement marking the beginning of a strategic partnership with DLA as one of VA’s logistics providers.
April Weaver, one of DLA’s GT&C COE team leads, said the agreements are mandated by the Treasury; however, they are not “financially obligatory,” which supports them being written at the highest level possible in accordance with Treasury and Department of Defense guidance. Before the DLA GT&C COE was formed in July 2021, DLA’s supply chains managed thousands of reimbursable agreements across the agency. By centralizing the DLA effort for GT&C resources, the agency has improved the efficiency of the reimbursable agreement process.
“As a team of nine people, we have now gone from 800 manageable agreements to just less than 200,” she said. “Signing the agreement will enable DLA to consolidate and minimize the number of agreements DLA has with a particular trading partner to meet Departments of Treasury and Defense policies and increase the efficiency of the end-to-end purchase request process within the G-Invoicing platform.”
Walens has been working with DLA Troop Support’s Medical supply chain since 2019 to establish agreements with multiple VHA healthcare facilities. In recent years, DLA has moved from individual supply chain agreements to enterprise-level agreements to showcase a “One DLA” approach when working with customers. Agency-level agreements simplify end-user experience when processing trading partners orders.
“Prior to the agreement being in place, our federal civilian trading partners could submit multiple military intergovernmental purchase requests whenever a need arose, which also required them to submit a new agreement every time,” Walens said. “With the implementation of G-Invoicing and enterprise-level agreements, the team has reduced the lead time up front for our trading partners to receive their goods and services without delay when the need arises or in the event of a national crisis or natural disaster.”
“The agency-level agreements align with DLA Strategic Plan’s transformation imperatives and operational principles. In an era of government efficiency, it allows us to be flexible in maintaining support to our federal trading partners, while still meeting the federal government’s audit compliance guidelines,” he added.
As the federal government works to account for financial transactions between agencies through G-Invoicing, the new agreement helps ensure audit compliance while providing overarching support and centralizing the acquisition process of goods and services between the two entities.
“G-Invoicing enables the agencies to set up the agreements, standardize the data, improve policies and process gaps to ensure DLA receives a clean audit opinion,” Walens said.