Procurement chief: Measure contractor performance

April 25, 2013 by

Joe Jordan, the top White House procurement official, recently told a gathering of government officials and contractors how he and his wife sometimes travel to New England and look for places to stay along the way. He wasn’t giving travel advice, though.

The remarks, delivered at an acquisition conference in Washington, aimed to highlight a way the government can improve how it does business.

“It really bothers me at a personal, visceral level that when I look for a bed and breakfast because my wife and I are going away for the weekend, I have vastly more descriptive information … about the quality of bed and breakfasts within a three-hour drive of D.C. than what many agencies have when they answer to a $20 million IT services contract,” Jordan said. “That’s ridiculous.”

Keep reading this article at: http://www.federaltimes.com/article/20130417/IT03/304170004/Procurement-chief-Measure-contractor-performance?odyssey=nav%7Chead 

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President’s budget moves spending transparency site from GSA to Treasury

April 17, 2013 by

President Obama’s fiscal 2014 budget proposal moves control over the spending transparency website USASpending.gov out of the General Services Administration and gives it to the Treasury Department.

The budget also requests $5.5 million in additional funding for Treasury to manage the site, a Treasury spokeswoman said. The site was previously paid for with the e-government fund, a pot of congressionally-mandated money devoted to using the Internet and other electronic communications to improve citizen services and public access to government information.

“Treasury will conduct an analysis of the operation and information in USASpending and determine what changes in the medium or long term may be warranted,” the spokeswoman said. “The collection of government wide financial management information is closely aligned with Treasury responsibilities.”

Keep reading this article at: http://www.nextgov.com/cio-briefing/2013/04/presidents-budget-moves-spending-transparency-site-gsa-treasury/62456/?oref=ng-HPriver

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Top officers: F-35 essential, but procurement ‘constipated’

April 11, 2013 by

The top officers in the Navy and Marine Corps defended their most expensive program, Lockheed Martin’s troubled F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, while acknowledging the way the Pentagon buys such weapons is not merely broken but “constipated.”

“There’s no alternative for the United States Marine Corps to the F-35B,” Commandant Gen. James Amos said at the opening session of the Navy League’s annual Sea-Air-Space conference. “I want to make that crystal clear to everybody in the audience.” All the great aircraft of the past have gone through teething troubles in development, said Amos, a pilot himself.

“Speaking for the Navy,” added the Chief of Naval Operations, Adm. Jonathan Greenert, “I need the fifth-generation fighter, and that [F-35] provides it, so we’re all in — but it has to perform. It has problems; it is making progress.”

“I do not at this point believe that it is time to look for an exit ramp, if you will, for the Navy for the F-35C,” continued Greenert, who in the past has damned the Joint Strike Fighter with similar faint praise.

Their commitment to the aircraft aside, both men acknowledged – in response to a pointed question from Reagan’s Navy Secretary, John Lehman — that the procurement process which produces systems like the F-35 is a mess. “The process is constipated,” said Gen. Amos. “It’s broke.”

Keep reading this article at: http://defense.aol.com/2013/04/08/gen-amos-adm-greenert-f-35-essential-but-procurement-consti 

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OFPP tells agencies to get serious about tracking contractor performance

March 25, 2013 by

The Office of Federal Procurement Policy is attempting, for a third time, to get  agencies to use the Past Performance Information Retrieval System (PPIRS) more  consistently.

So instead of asking and encouraging, OFPP Administrator Joe Jordan is setting  specific goals for agencies.

In a new memo to chief acquisition officers and  senior procurement executives, Jordan sets three-year targets for agencies to  enter vendor-performance information into the governmentwide database.

This year, the goals vary depending on how often the agency is currently entering  data into PPIRS. For instance, departments inputting data for 60 percent or more  of their contracts, must improve to 85 percent by Sept. 30. For agencies using  PPIRS 30 percent to 60 percent of the time, their goal now is 75  percent. And for those agencies using PPIRS less than 30 percent of the time,  their goal is 65 percent.

“This required contract-administration duty can significantly reduce the risk to  the government on future awards, so agencies must take bold steps to ensure that  all critical performance information is made available in the Past Performance  Information Retrieval System (PPIRS) in a timely manner, and to the maximum extent  practicable, eliminate duplicative, paper-based past performance evaluation  surveys generated outside these systems,” Jordan wrote.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.federalnewsradio.com/517/3247234/OFPP-tells-agencies-to-get-serious-about-tracking-contractor-performance

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Bid protests are worth their costs, former OFPP chief says

March 20, 2013 by

Contractors on the losing side of a competitive bidding who protest to the Government Accountability Office do not hurt or game the procurement system as some critics allege, says a forthcoming study.

The percentage of contracts that spark protests is also comparatively small, while the overall impact of the protest procedure is healthy, according to Dan Gordon, the former Obama administration head of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy and now associate dean for government procurement law studies at George Washington University Law School.

In an article set for publication this spring in the Public Contract Law Journal, a copy of which was provided to Government Executive, Gordon wrote that “there exist a number of misperceptions concerning bid protest statistics that deserve attention, because these misperceptions can taint judgments about the benefits and costs of protests. In particular, even people quite familiar with the federal acquisition system often believe that protests are more common than they really are, and they believe, inaccurately, that protesters use the protest process as a business tactic to obtain contracts from the government.”

Keep reading this article at: http://www.govexec.com/contracting/2013/03/bid-protests-are-worth-their-costs-ex-procurement-chief-says/61827/?oref=govexec_today_nl

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Former chiefs: Fix procurement to save the Navy

March 12, 2013 by

In a remarkably non-partisan moment amidst the current strife over budget cuts and Chuck Hagel, Ronald Reagan’s Navy Secretary and George W. Bush’s Chief of Naval Operations told a Republican-helmed committee that the Navy’s real problem was not the Obama administration’s budget but decades of creeping bureaucracy that have eaten every budget’s buying power.

“I hate to say anything particularly in praise of this administration’s defense policy,” said John Lehman, Navy Secretary from 1981 to 1987 and national security advisor to Mitt Romney in 2012, at a hearing of the seapower panel of the House Armed Services Committee, chaired by Rep. Randy Forbes. But, Lehman went on, a recent report by the Defense Business Board really shows “how to get at the bureaucracy and the overhead.”
The chairman of that study, retired Marine general Arnold Punaro, told AOL Defense at the time that its recommendation for the Pentagon procurement system was, in a phrase, “put a match to it.”

Keep reading this article at: http://defense.aol.com/2013/02/26/john-lehman-gary-roughead-fix-procurement-to-save-the-navy 

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Senate approves wartime contracting reform bill

December 12, 2012 by

The Senate on Thursday added broad overseas contracting reform to its version of the Defense authorization bill, handing Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., a victory in her six-year effort to crack down on procurement waste in war zones.

The Comprehensive Contingency Contracting Reform Act was introduced in February after a report issued by the bipartisan Commission on Wartime Contracting told Congress that federal contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan had wasted an estimated $60 billion.

If accepted in a House-Senate conference, the bill would seek to reduce waste in overseas military operations and occupations by elevating oversight responsibility, improving management structures, expanding planning requirements and reforming contracting practices. It would prohibit excessive pass-through contracts and charges to the government and add new oversight responsibilities for inspectors general for contingency operations, according to McCaskill’s staff. And it would remake the contracting process to provide greater transparency, competition, professional education and accountability.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.govexec.com/contracting/2012/11/senate-approves-wartime-contracting-reform-bill/59874/?oref=national_defense_nl.

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Body overseeing Washington airports called ‘poster child for corruption’

November 28, 2012 by

The regional body overseeing Washington area airport projects such as the subway extension to Dulles International Airport is a “poster child for corruption” that needs major management reforms, a House committee chairman said.

“This is a sad chapter for metropolitan Washington and advocates for good D.C. transportation,” Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., said at a Friday hearing of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee that reviewed a Nov. 1 Transportation Department inspector general report. “The IG found problems with hiring practices, a lack of competition for contracts and ethical violations.”

Mica mentioned contractors providing Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority employees with trips to golf tournaments, tickets to sporting events and concerts, and travel and accommodations amounting to nearly $5,000, as well as “preferential treatment to friends and relatives of board members.”

The board, which employs 1,400 and consists of political appointees made by the Maryland and Virginia governors and the District of Columbia mayor, has been in the news in recent months because of debates over the cost and scope of the Metro extension to Dulles and because of questionable salaries and travel expenses of some employees and board members.

Inspector General Calvin L. Scovel III testified that “MWAA’s policies and practices have not provided the controls needed to ensure accountability, transparency and sound governance.” A lack of internal controls has created a culture that allows questionable contracting practices . . . including initiating work before contract award, awarding sole source and limited competition contracts without proper justification, and providing nonpublic information that gives potential contractors an unfair advantage in competition.”

Keep reading this article at: http://www.govexec.com/oversight/2012/11/body-overseeing-washington-airports-called-poster-child-corruption/59633/?oref=govexec_today_nl.

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Stricter Pcard rules signed into law

October 16, 2012 by

President Obama signed a bill into law Friday that creates stricter rules for federal employees using government charge cards, Federal News Radio reported.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, introduced the 2012 Government Charge Card Abuse Prevention Act in February 2011, and it cleared Congress during the final minutes of lawmakers’ session in late September. Grassley worked on the legislation with Sens. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., and Susan Collins, R-Maine. In a statement, Grassley said the legislation was created to restore the public’s trust in government spending.

“This bill is about accountability,” he said. “The public trust has been violated by abusive use of government charge cards. By putting some common-sense controls into the law, we can make certain the federal bureaucracy improves the way it responsibly manages the use of these cards.”

Keep reading this article at: http://www.govexec.com/oversight/2012/10/obama-signs-new-government-charge-card-rules/58663/?oref=govexec_today_nl.

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Congress clears bill cracking down on purchase card abuse

October 1, 2012 by

In the waning hours of its session, Congress on Saturday passed a bill to toughen oversight of agency purchasing cards, codifying new penalties on federal employees who abuse the cards.

The Government Charge Card Abuse Prevention Act resurfaced abruptly, having been introduced in February 2011 by Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, long before the Obama administration began its focused effort to cut waste in agency operations. It cleared the House in July with an amendment requiring Senate approval.

“This bill is about accountability,” said Grassley, who worked on the bill with co-sponsors Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., and Susan Collins, R-Maine. “The public trust has been violated by abusive use of government charge cards. By putting some common-sense controls into the law, we can make certain the federal bureaucracy improves the way it responsibly manages the use of these cards.”

Keep reading this article at: http://www.govexec.com/oversight/2012/09/congress-clears-bill-cracking-down-agency-purchasing-card-abuse/58356/?oref=govexec_today_nl.

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