Defense IG: TRICARE acquisition staff lack required certification and training

May 7, 2013 by

Procurement personnel at the TRICARE Management Activity, which had an acquisition budget of $18.8 billion in 2012,  lacked formal certification for their jobs, proper training and accurate position descriptions, the Defense Department Inspector General said in a highly critical report released yesterday.

These problems start at the top, the IG said, noting that none of the 32 senior TMA acquisition personnel met all the requirements for their positions mandated under the 1990 Defense Acquisition Workforce Improvement Act, including those who held Acquisition Corps positions.

Keep  reading this article at: http://www.nextgov.com/health/2013/05/defense-ig-tricare-acquisition-personnel-lack-certification-and-training/62941/?oref=govexec_today_nl 

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Pentagon prepares to ask U.S. Congress for break from “sequester”

May 6, 2013 by

The Pentagon is preparing to ask Congress soon for more authority to shift funds to cope with automatic spending cuts,  confronting lawmakers with another exception to the “sequester” just days after they gave a break to the flying public and the airline industry.

The request may be sent to the House of Representatives’ Appropriations Committee as early as next week, a House Republican aide said on Wednesday.

The Pentagon won increased budget flexibility in March, but officials have told members of Congress they believe it was insufficient to cover shortfalls in training and operations.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/01/usa-fiscal-defense-idUSL2N0DI1P120130501.

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US has concerns with UK plan to outsource acquisition oversight

May 5, 2013 by

The US Defense Department is expressing concern over a UK initiative to consider outsourcing management of its defense procurement and support operations, roles traditionally filled by government employees.

Britain  plans to select a contractor to fulfill acquisition oversight duties by mid-2014 and is poised to begin a 12-month assessment of the government-owned, contractor-operated (GOCO) framework. The plan is part of broader overhaul of the UK Defence Equipment & Support operation (DE&S).

“We do have some concerns over an option that would put contractors in roles normally filled by government employees and the effects this would have on ongoing and future cooperation,” said US Lt. Col. Melinda Morgan, a spokeswoman for Frank Kendall, DoD’s top acquisition official.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.defensenews.com/article/20130429/DEFREG01/304290015/US-Has-Concerns-UK-Plan-Outsource-Acquisition-Oversight

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Contracting professionals need to travel … and train

May 4, 2013 by

No one can forget the image released a year ago of a government executive holding a champagne glass in toast while sitting in a Las Vegas hot tub — paid for with federal dollars. Congressional leaders were rightfully indignant and called for a halt to such events. However, taxpayer costs for government acquisition may now be increasing as a result of overreach policies implemented since then.

The less than $1 million expenditure for the General Services Administration Western Region conference in 2010, wasteful as it was, has evolved, justifying the imposition of far more comprehensive restrictions on the government acquisition community that are not reducing government waste or budget deficits. Though nominal savings come from prohibiting training, travel and public interaction, this is overshadowed by the hidden increased costs caused by gaps in knowledge, business communications and relationships otherwise derived through in-person interactions and learning. A workforce improperly trained or communicating poorly with industry results in badly managed contracts and misunderstandings that cost taxpayers. In a time of increased contracting activity, as agencies realign their budgets to meet deficit reduction targets, it is no surprise that contractor protest activity is up. Nondelivering contracts affect federal budgets more adversely than small short-term agency training cuts.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.federaltimes.com/article/20130428/ADOP06/304280004/Contracting-professionals-need-travel-8212-train 

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Where’s the beef In DoD’s acquisition reform efforts, weapons buys?

May 3, 2013 by

In a town full of hot air, speeches are a dime a dozen. But money still talks. So let’s compare the new Secretary of Defense’s policy agenda to his first proposed budget.

While Leon Panetta, his predecessor, mostly built this budget, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel owns it now and has already spent a considerable amount of time defending it. The results leave interested observers wanting more. Much more. After listening to Hagel’s first policy speech and comparing it to the President’s 2014 defense budget, it begs the question “Where’s the beef?”

Big Ideas …

On its face, the new Secretary of Defense seemed to lay out an ambitious reform agenda for tackling the entrenched bureaucratic interests of the Department of Defense (DoD) and politically sensitive issues in need of modernization. The Secretary talked about areas in need of change — some more than others — including acquisition and the purchase of goods and services; bureaucratic overhead and the size of the civilian workforce; excess infrastructure; and compensation for personnel.

Keep reading this article at http://defense.aol.com/2013/04/22/hagels-budget-wheres-the-beef-in-reform-efforts-budget/ 

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Army acquisition strategy supports helicopters that can’t fly

May 2, 2013 by

The Army’s problem with its new Apache helicopters isn’t as bad as we thought when we first wrote about it last week. It’s worse.

We knew that Northstar Aerospace, the subcontractor making the transmissions for lead contractor Boeing, had fallen behind on building that crucial component. We knew at least seven of the latest model, the vaunted AH-64E Apache Guardian, had been built at some point without transmissions, rendering them unflyable until the part was finally installed.

What we didn’t know was that the Army was taking new Apaches that did have transmissions, running them through the full battery of flight tests, formally accepting them from the contractor, and then taking the transmissions back out again. Why? So Boeing can re-install those transmissions on the next aircraft coming off the line, which allows that chopper to be tested, accepted, and stripped of its transmission in turn.

In brief, it looks like the service is playing a classic shell game that allows the aircraft to pass their flight tests even though there are not enough transmissions for all of them to actually fly at the same time. The Army insists Boeing is paying for all the extra work, as the company should. But installing, removing, reinstalling, re-removing, and re-reinstalling a component can’t help but put unnecessary wear and tear on it. (There’s a reason that technicians call the process, with grim humor, “cannibalization”). The ultimate result is that transmissions will wear out faster, which in turn means more expense down the road and a higher probability of the part failing in combat.

Lt. Gen. William Phillips, the military deputy to Army acquisition chief Heidi Shyu, revealed much of this in testimony this morning (Apr. 26, 2013) to the House Armed Services tactical air and land forces subcommittee. Phillips was responding to a pointed question from a clearly well-briefed Rep. Loretta Sanchez, the panel’s top Democrat. We’ve also received explanatory documents from sources we can’t name. And there are still plenty of questions we’re waiting for the Army and Congress to answer on the record.

Keep reading this article at: http://defense.aol.com/2013/04/26/army-plays-shell-game-with-unfinished-apache-helicopters-put-th

 

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Sequester to blame for delay in DARPA’s Plan X cyber contracting plans

May 1, 2013 by

Sequestration is “quite corrosive” to projects underway at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, said its director, factoring into the decision to delay the highly touted Plan X that recruits private companies and universities to develop technologies to improve cyberwarfare capabilities.

The across-the-board cuts as a result of the 2011 Budget Control Act trimmed DARPA’s fiscal 2013 budget by $202 million, which translated to an 8 percent cut of all programs in its portfolio.

“We have about a dozen major program elements and each of those had to take this across-the-board cut,” said DARPA Director Arati Prabhakar during a press briefing on April 24, 2013.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.bizjournals.com/washington/blog/fedbiz_daily/2013/04/sequester-to-blame-for-delay-of.html

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Lockheed Martin fears $825 million hit from sequestration

April 30, 2013 by

Government contractor Lockheed Martin Corp. announced Tuesday (Apr. 23, 2013) that across-the-board budget cuts from sequestration could potentially cut its 2013 sales forecast by $825 million.

The company is the first large contractor to outline the impact of sequestration on its business. In January, Lockheed Martin, like other major contractors, published its 2013 sales guidance with the assumption that sequestration would not occur.  A statement published in March said that the company was waiting for further guidance from its “government customers” before making specific business decisions.

Lockheed Martin said in its earning report Tuesday that the primary costs from sequestration-related budget cuts would result from rescheduling and “terminating activity” with its supplier base, severance payments made to employees, cost of closing facilities, and possible impairment costs.  The company’s “high level” estimate of sequestration impact also assumes many of the federal reductions will be “achieved through delaying and deferring new program starts,” rather than modifying existing programs with “contractually obligated schedule and delivery requirements.”

Keep reading this article at: http://www.govexec.com/contracting/2013/04/lockheed-martin-fears-825-million-hit-sequestration/62719/?oref=govexec_today_nl

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Space acquisition no longer broken, getting better, says GAO

April 29, 2013 by

Less than five years ago, almost every major unclassified space program was grossly over budget and behind schedule.

The rock stars of rottenness were the weather satellite program known as NPOESS and the missile warning satellite program called SBIRS, but they were not alone. These problems ate at the soul of the Air Force and the space community, which had both been justifiably proud of the remarkable accomplishments they had wracked up during the first quarter century of the space age.

Now the Government Accountability Office — which most people in industry and many in the Pentagon will tell you never met a program it liked — has given its tentative stamp of approval to space acquisition with a report bearing this euphonious title: “DOD Is Overcoming Long-Standing Problems, but Faces Challenges to Ensuring Its Investments Are Optimized.” It sounds as if space acquisition is halfway out of the woods.

Here’s the nub of the GAO testimony delivered before House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee:

“For the portfolio of major satellite programs, new cost and schedule growth is not as widespread as it was in prior years, but DOD is still experiencing problems. For example, total program costs have increased approximately $180 million from a baseline of $4.1 billion for one of two satellite programs that are in the earlier phases of acquisition. Though satellite programs are not experiencing problems as widespread as in years past, ground control systems and user terminals in most of DOD’s major space system acquisitions are not optimally aligned, leading to underutilized satellites and limited capability provided to the warfighter.”

Keep reading this article at: http://defense.aol.com/2013/04/25/space-acquisition-no-longer-broken-getting-better-says-gao.

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OFPP brings no predisposed notions to strategic sourcing

April 26, 2013 by

The Strategic Sourcing Leadership Council delivered a set of proposals for how and where to expand the Federal Strategic Sourcing Initiative.

But not every suggestion sent to the Office of Federal Procurement Policy in March was about a new contract or expanding a current blanket purchase agreement.

Joe Jordan, the administrator of OFPP, said the council wants to move forward with a number strategic sourcing efforts, including technology hardware and software, laboratory supplies, janitorial and sanitation, mobile and wireless products and services and others.

“We are now working with them to say ‘what is the solution?’ It doesn’t mean in all those categories, there is one governmentwide contract,” Jordan said, after a panel discussion on strategic sourcing at an event sponsored by the Coalition for Government Procurement in Arlington, Va. Wednesday. “We are putting all that commodity under management with an executive agent that has a deep content knowledge and all of the large buyers at the table, along with the Small Business Administration, to figure out what the right solution is. In some cases, it will mean reduced contract duplication, better leveraging our spend and driving volume based discounts. In other cases, it’s more terms and conditions and taking administrative costs out of the approach.”

Keep reading this article at: http://www.federalnewsradio.com/517/3290214/OFPP-brings-no-predisposed-notions-to-strategic-sourcing

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