GAO | The Contracting Education Academy

April 26, 2017 By cs

Changes coming to SAM.gov

The General Services Administration (GSA) is planning to test a new version of the System for Award Management (SAM.gov).

This means that plans GSA made as far back as 2001 may be realized sometime in 2018.

At present, SAM.gov is the federal database where vendors register to do business with the government. When it went live in mid-2012, SAM was introduced as portal where, over time, several different government databases would be consolidated. Federal Agency Registration (FedReg), the Online Representations and Certifications Application (ORCA), and the Excluded Parties List System (EPLS) were among the systems to be first consolidated under the SAM umbrella.

The 2012 introduction of SAM initially was delayed and, once launched, many problems were encountered by vendors and government agencies alike. Since then, SAM experienced a data breach in 2013, cost overruns, accessibility issues, and periodic interface difficulties with SBA’s small business database.

GSA now plans to resume work on the original vision for SAM: the consolidation of as many as 10 websites.

A new test site, at beta.sam.gov, reportedly is to launch between July 1 and Sept. 30, 2017.

The objective of the consolidated web site is to reduce the federal contracting burden on contractors and government officials alike by creating a single place to access a range of data, including contractor registration information, contract award data on prime contractors and subcontractors, and information about companies excluded from pursuing government work.

Eventually, the functions of 10 existing sites — including SAM.gov, the Federal Procurement Data System (fpds.gov); Federal Business Opportunities (fbo.gov), the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act Subaward Reporting System (fsrs.gov), and the Federal Awardee Performance and Integrity Information System (fapiis.gov) — will become a part of the SAM beta site. Once testing is completed, all of the added functionality will become a part of a new SAM.gov site. The sites that are merged into SAM.gov then will be retired.

Improvements, such as search features, will continue to be made to existing sites as the new site is being tested, GSA says.

April 14, 2017 By cs

Progress impeded, acquisition workforce anxious as bid protests continue to multiply

If you want to strike a nerve with federal acquisition managers, bring up bid protests.

The number of protests have all but doubled over the past decade, and that’s creating a significant amount of consternation among the ranks of acquisition personnel at the General Services Administration (GSA).

Janine Wilkinson, GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service national account manager for the Army, said that this was one of the main things federal customers need from industry during a Coalition for Government Procurement panel on April 4, and other GSA officials quickly piled on.

“It’s not just the Army, it’s across the spectrum of customers,” Mark Aucello, director of GSA’s Assisted Acquisition Services client support center for the Mid-Atlantic region, said. “We understand, if we do something wrong, and there’s a legitimate reason to protest, then protest. That’s what it’s there for. But … [when] it’s ‘I want to keep it another six months because I’m the incumbent and I lost,’ I think that’s the sort of thing that creates a lot of work and expense on the government’s part.”

Tom Howder, assistant commissioner for AAS, agreed, noting that nationally, there’s been an increase in protests, which lengthens the acquisition time frame and impacts the workforce, who frequently have to be reassured that the number of bid protests are not a reflection on the quality of their work.

Keep reading this article at: http://federalnewsradio.com/acquisition/2017/04/progress-impeded-acquisition-workforce-anxious-bid-protests-continue-multiply/

April 13, 2017 By cs

Pentagon needs to set clear goals to improve acquisition workforce

A Defense Department program aimed at improving the quality of the Pentagon’s acquisition workforce needs to establish concrete time frames and metrics for measuring success, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found.

Congress established the Defense Acquisition Workforce Development Fund in 2008 to provide Pentagon officials with a dedicated funding source to recruit, train and retain skilled staff — the program managers, contracting officers, engineers, cost estimators and others who award and administer more than $250 billion in contracts annually. Steep personnel cuts in previous years had left the department heavily reliant on contractors, and lawmakers were concerned that Defense wasn’t effectively managing its programs.

But for years, the department struggled to allocate funds in a timely way, in part because the bulk of money for the fund is contributed by Defense agencies and the military services based on what those components spend on contract services. It took as long as 24 months to remit the payments through the comptroller, which resulted in considerable delays.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.govexec.com/contracting/2017/04/pentagon-needs-set-clear-goals-improve-acquisition-workforce/136786/

April 11, 2017 By cs

DHA achieves an acquisition first for the agency

The Homeland Security Department’s acquisition struggles have been in Congress’ crosshairs for years and were again highlighted in the Government Accountability Office’s High-Risk list this February.

A new GAO audit, however, suggests progress addressing those issues.

Released this week, the audit states all 26 acquisition programs GAO reviewed met department-approved cost, schedule and performance baselines to measure progress “for the first time since GAO began its annual assessments” three years ago, with more than half the programs on track to meet initial cost goals.

The audit covers DHS acquisitions over fiscal 2016, which total approximately $7 billion spent on ships, surveillance technology at the border, screening equipment at airports and other equipment.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.nextgov.com/cio-briefing/2017/04/dhs-achieves-acquisition-first-agency/136849

April 6, 2017 By cs

GAO: DoD boosted its ‘buying power’ by $10.7 billion in 2016

The media and Congress are quick to point out instances in which Pentagon procurement has gone drastically awry, and rightly so, since it’s public money at stake. But it’s also worth pointing out glimmers of progress when we see them.

**Better Buying Power (BBP) is based on the principle that continuous improvement is the best approach to improving the performance of the defense acquisition enterprise.**

In its annual assessment of Department of Defense (DoD) major weapons systems, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) calculated last week that over the past year, the department has seen a $10.7 billion increase in its “buying power” — GAO’s term for the amount of goods or services the department’s able to buy with a given amount of money, even after adjusting for increases or decreases in the number of items within a certain procurement line.

In fact, there are several data points in GAO’s analysis of DoD’s 2016 weapons portfolio that seem to undercut the narrative that weapons costs are out of control, a picture painted as recently as last week by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who claimed that the Pentagon has “done nothing but resist” Congress’s efforts to control cost growth.

As we reported in some detail last month, DoD’s own analyses show that cost growth is now at its lowest level since 1985 (3.5 percent as of 2015), and it’s been steadily declining since right around the time the department introduced a series of internal reform initiatives known as Better Buying Power.

Keep reading this article at: http://federalnewsradio.com/dod-reporters-notebook-jared-serbu/2017/04/gao-finds-dod-boosted-buying-power-10-7-billion-2016/

If you want to strike a nerve with federal acquisition managers, bring up bid protests.

A Defense Department program aimed at improving the quality of the Pentagon’s acquisition workforce needs to establish concrete time frames and metrics for measuring success, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found.

The Homeland Security Department’s acquisition struggles have been in Congress’ crosshairs for years and were again highlighted in the Government Accountability Office’s High-Risk list this February.

The media and Congress are quick to point out instances in which Pentagon procurement has gone drastically awry, and rightly so, since it’s public money at stake. But it’s also worth pointing out glimmers of progress when we see them.

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