This course examines the role senior leaders in both government and industry play in the successful acquisition of information technologies and services to achieve strategic organizational goals. Using the framework of the systems development life-cycle, it explores regulatory policies, acquisition strategies, requirements management, performance measurement, and deployment and sustainment activities that directly impact IT acquisition. Acquisition best practices such as performance-based contracting, risk management, use of service-level agreements, trade-off analyses, as well as the pros and cons for use of commercial off-the-shelf products are explored. Significant focus is placed on contracting issues including; the role of the contracting officer, building a solid request-for -proposal, how to prepare for and run a source selection and the role of oral presentations.