Book Description

The Department of Defense must learn to use commercial and nondevelopmental items (NDI) effectively. Our ability to field affordable, state-of-the-art systems when they are needed, and to buy the millions of items needed to support our troops and fielded systems, depends on efficient use of available resources. The commercial industrial base is a vast resource capable of providing many of these items. A significant change in this updated version of the handbook is the definitional separation of commercial items and nondevelopmental items. This separation is for the purpose of clearly indicating the Department's preference for the use of commercial items (including systems) to the extent possible. Originally, and in statute, commercial items were considered a subset of nondevelopmental items, with NDI loosely defined as any previously developed item regardless of the source of the development. However, commercial items are not considered a subset of NDI in this handbook and in the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR), but rather a separate set of items. The handbook also reflects changes to the acquisition of commercial items resulting from the Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act of 1994.