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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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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Pentagon has spent billions on doomed programs

April 1, 2013 by
The Pentagon has squandered billions of  dollars over the past two decades on weapon systems it never produced and on  rosy cost estimates that ballooned to sizes that ate up funds for other  projects, according to government reports and defense analysts.

The miscalculations have come back to haunt the armed forces at a time when  tighter budgets are forcing it to curtail basic war-fighting preparations such  as training, ship and aircraft repairs, and overseas deployments.

Pro-defense conservatives, however, say that despite the procurement  mistakes, the country needs a robust military to confront an array of threats — and that costs money.

Still, how the Pentagon misspent billions  over two decades has relevancy for the future.

Money devoted to doomed programs such as the Army’s Future Combat System or poured into the F-35  Joint Strike Fighter could have come in handy today. Analysts say that if the Pentagon had better-managed the research,  development and acquisition of satellites, vehicles and planes, the force in 2013 would be more modern and more resilient against  automatic spending cuts, or “sequestration,” that began March 1.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/mar/17/pentagon-has-spent-billions-on-doomed-programs/?page=all#pagebreak 

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Are we headed for an acquisition brain drain?

March 29, 2013 by

The top federal procurement officer on Mar. 21, 2013 called for “not a tweak but a full rethink” of the government’s planning for its acquisition workforce, warning that as many as 40 percent of the 36,000 federal contracting officers could retire in the next five years.

Joe Jordan, administrator of the White House Office of Federal Procurement Policy, compared the coming brain drain to water flowing out of a “giant bathtub,” saying he plans to push agencies to “widen the aperture of who they recruit.”

Hiring managers should sell their agencies “as a good place to work for anyone who is smart and wants to serve” and then train them at facilities such as the Federal Acquisition Institute, Jordan told an audience of vendors and agency staff at the “Acquisition Excellence” conference hosted jointly by the American Council for Technology-Industry Advisory Council and the General Services Administration. “Retaining these people in an era of continuing resolutions and pay freezes is a real challenge.”

Keep reading this article at: http://www.govexec.com/contracting/2013/03/are-we-headed-acquisition-brain-drain/62011/?oref=dropdown

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Chief acquisition officers fear budget woes put contracting workforce at risk

March 26, 2013 by

Many contracting reform efforts over the past few years have focused on building  up the federal acquisition workforce. Now, faced with near-crippling budget  uncertainty, agency acquisition officials are worried the progress of the past few  years could stall.

Agency chief acquisition officers are growing increasingly concerned about the  effects of the budget  crunch on the acquisition workforce, according to an exclusive Federal News Radio survey. Retaining the existing acquisition workforce was the  No. 1 priority identified by CAOs, followed closely by more workforce training and  hiring more acquisition workers.

The survey of chief acquisition officers and other senior-level procurement  managers was sent in January 2013 to 112 people. Twenty-nine responded — a 26 percent response rate.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.federalnewsradio.com/76/3248696/Agency-CAOs-fear-budget-woes-put-workforce-at-risk.

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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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Pentagon’s internal feud over contract auditing takes a new twist

March 19, 2013 by

The ongoing dispute over the quality of work at the Defense Contract Audit Agency took a new turn on Thursday with the release of a Defense Inspector General’s Office report criticizing the professional judgment used in DCAA assignments dating back to 2010 and earlier.

The March 7 report — which the deputy IG acknowledged was delayed for two years while the office’s staff focused more on DCAA hotlines than audits — covered quality assurance reviews on 50 DCAA reports completed in the first half of fiscal 2010.

“DCAA did not exercise professional judgment in performing 37 (74 percent) of the assignments reviewed,” the IG team concluded. “The abundance of non-compliances with standards identified in the 37 assignments evidenced the need for improvements in the area of competence at DCAA.”

Keep reading this article at: http://www.govexec.com/contracting/2013/03/pentagons-internal-feud-over-contract-auditing-takes-new-twist/61772/?oref=govexec_today_nl 

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Pentagon fails to explain sole-source contracts, GAO says

February 22, 2013 by

The Defense Department has made scant headway in justifying its awards of sole-source contracting as required under a fiscal 2012 defense authorization bill, the Government Accountability Office found.

From October 2009 to September 2012, the Pentagon awarded 51 sole-source contracts worth more than $20 million, GAO said in a Feb. 8 letter to the Armed Services Committee chairmen, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., and Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon, R-Calif.

But in a review of eight of the most recent contracts, Defense contracting officers failed in six cases to comply with 2011 changes in the Federal Acquisition Regulation. “Six contracts did not meet the new justification requirement because contracting officials were not aware of the requirement or because they were confused about the type of justification to complete,” auditors found.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.govexec.com/contracting/2013/02/pentagon-fails-explain-sole-source-contracts-gao-says/61231/?oref=management_agenda_nl.

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Watchdog wants everyone on the same page about multi-agency contracting

February 1, 2013 by

The Defense Department needs to modernize its procurement procedures to take better advantage of interagency contracting, a Government Accountability Office report found.

At a time when savings from multi-agency purchases of goods and services are key goals of the Office of Management and Budget and the General Services Administration, GAO has been monitoring several agencies’ internal regulations, policy and guidance for compliance with changes to the Federal Acquisition Regulation.

“This is particularly important for DoD, where the inconsistency we found in how its organizations addressed the best procurement approach determination appears to be due to the lack of updated policies and guidance,” GAO wrote.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.govexec.com/contracting/2013/01/watchdog-wants-everyone-same-page-about-multi-agency-contracting/60996/?oref=govexec_today_nl,

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