What do 18F, the HHS and DHS Innovation Labs, and OMB’s recent call for more labs, have in common?  All are designed as work-arounds from the government’s current commercial item acquisition systems.  At their core, 18F and its cousins are all about seeing just how much of the FAR they can be excused from so that the government can get tech fast.  Just like quadruple heart by-pass surgery, though, if we need this much work-around, the central organ of government procurement is in mighty bad shape.  The answer to a sick patient isn’t always a work-around.  More often, doctors try to cure the underlying illness first.  If new rules, ironically often implemented by the same administration that wants to bring us innovation, are slowing down the process (see article below), maybe we need to do away with them – or at least carve out commercial item acquisitions from their reach.  Many of these rules were implemented by those who thought they were targeting non-commercial acquisitions.  The good news is that the same people who imposed the rules can lift them for commercial item buying.  We don’t need every agency to create a new lab. That just puts new stress on top of old systems. We need to do a little acquisition regulation liposuction and lighten the regulatory load on commercial buying.