MAS vendors don’t always provide accurate information or qualified labor, says GSA OIG

May 21, 2013 by

The General Services Administration still permits vendors that provide  inaccurate commercial sales data and supply unqualified labor to remain on  schedules contract vehicles, says the agency’s inspector general.

In the report, auditors say problems related to vendors providing accurate commercial  sales practices and providing price justifications improved somewhat from fiscal  2010 to fiscal 2011, but still remain a concern. The prevalence of unqualified  labor rose in fiscal 2011.

While the prevalence of CSP issues dropped 14 percent from fiscal 2010,  auditors still found that more than two-thirds of vendors in preaward audits  during fiscal 2011 provided contracting officers with flawed CSP information  that “adversely affected the contracting officers’ determination of fair and  reasonable pricing for those contracts,” says the report.

Problems include instances when schedule contractors offered discounts at a  level greater than they disclosed to GSA, auditors say.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.fiercegovernment.com/story/mas-vendors-dont-always-provide-accurate-information-or-qualified-labor-say/2013-03-11

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Focus of IG investigation now oversees GSA’s IT supply schedule program

April 22, 2013 by

An ongoing investigation by the Office of Personnel Management’s inspector general into contract steering and wasteful spending raises questions about a former OPM official who left the agency in September 2011 to oversee the General Services Administration’s biggest federal supply schedules program.

The probe found that top OPM officials steered consulting work to prominent human resources expert Stewart Liff, raising broader concerns about the overall procurement practices inside the agency’s human resources services division, according to an interim report by OPM Inspector General Patrick McFarland.

Investigators found that Liff was hired in 2010 and 2011 without competitive bidding through a “pass-through company,” with three task orders paid out on the contract totaling about $450,000.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.federaltimes.com/article/20130416/ACQUISITION01/304160003/Focus-IG-investigation-now-oversees-GSA-8217-s-supply-schedule-program?odyssey=nav%7Chead

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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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GSA appoints Federal Acquisition Service chief

January 24, 2013 by

The Federal Acquisition Service, one of two divisions of the General Services Administration that courted trouble last year for overspending on conferences, has a new commissioner, GSA announced on Tuesday.

Thomas Sharpe, the senior procurement executive at the Treasury Department who has 30 years of public and private-sector acquisitions experience, will take over the FAS, according to an announcement by acting GSA Administrator Dan Tangherlini, who also came from Treasury.

Sharpe’s position had been held on an acting basis by Mary Davie, following the September departure of Steven Kempf, who went on medical leave just as lawmakers began probing an FAS conference held in Arlington, Va. Thousands of dollars were spent on team-building exercises and props at the conference. Kempf has returned to GSA as a senior adviser on acquisition.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.govexec.com/contracting/2013/01/gsa-appoints-federal-acquisition-service-chief/60808/?oref=govexec_today_nl.

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OMB launches governmentwide strategic sourcing initiative

December 14, 2012 by

The Office of Management and Budget launched a broad strategic sourcing initiative on Thursday to ensure all federal agencies manage their acquisitions effectively.

In a memo from OMB Acting Director Jeffery Zients, the initiative calls for federal agencies to increase its use of strategic sourcing for acquisition to “negotiate the best deal for the taxpayer.”

“While every agency must eliminate inefficiencies from its acquisition processes, this initiative puts additional responsibilities for designing and implementing government-wide strategic sourcing solutions on large agencies, which make up the vast majority of all Federal contracting,” Zients wrote in the memo.

Keep reading this article at: http://fedscoop.com/omb-launches-agency-wide-strategic-sourcing-initiative/

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OMB touts ‘historic’ $20 billion in contracting savings

December 11, 2012 by

Agency spending on goods and services contracts fell by $20 billion during the past year, the Office of Management and Budget announced Thursday.

Office of Federal Procurement Policy Administrator Joe Jordan ascribed this “historic” savings level to “a concerted and collaborative effort by all federal agencies.”

The downward trend in contracting — a $35 billion drop-off or 16 percent decrease within three years — surpasses the goal President Obama set in 2009, Jordan told reporters in a conference call. Its decline represents a “dramatic reversal of the unsustainable 12 percent contract spending growth rate experienced from 2000 through 2008,” he said.

Jordan added contract spending on management support services, such as information technology systems development, was cut by $7 billion during the past two years by “buying smarter and buying less,” another administration goal.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.govexec.com/contracting/2012/12/omb-touts-historic-20-billion-contracting-savings/60010/?oref=govexec_today_nl.

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Court rules VA can ignore set-asides for veteran-owned businesses on GSA Schedule buys

December 3, 2012 by

The Department of Veterans Affairs takes the position that it is not obligated to consider veteran-owned businesses on goods and services it buys through GSA’s Federal Supply Schedule, and now the VA has a court decision that backs its stance.

On November 27, 2012, the U.S. Court of Federal Claims ruled that the VA has discretion to procure goods and services from GSA’s Federal Supply Schedule without first considering a set-aside acquisition for service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses (SDVOSBs) or veteran-owned small businesses (VOSBs).

The ruling is a departure from several recent U.S. Government Accountability Office decisions.  The GAO has consistently ruled that the VA must comply with the Veterans Benefits, Health Care, and Information Technology Act of 2006 before conducting a GSA Schedule buy. The 2006 Act created the “Veterans First” contracting program that gives priority to SDVOSBs and VOSBs in VA acquisitions.  The VA has maintained that the GAO’s interpretation of the 2006 Act was wrong and instructed its contracting officers to not apply the “Veterans First” principles to Schedule contracting. 

The Kingdomware case represents the first time a court has ruled on the question of whether the GSA Schedule program is influenced by the terms of the “Veterans First” program. 

In siding with the VA’s position, the Kingdomware decision found that the 2006 Act “is at best ambiguous as to whether it mandates a preference for SDVOSBs and VOSBs for all VA procurements.”   The Federal Claims Court ruled:

  • The [VA] Secretary’s discretion to set contracting goals for SDVOSBs and VOSBs under the ["Veterans First" Act] contradicts plaintiff’s interpretation of the statute as creating a mandatory SDVOSB and VOSB set-aside procedure for each and every procurement . . . the goal-setting nature of the statute clouds the clarity plaintiff would attribute to the phrase “shall award” . . . and renders the ["Veterans First"] ambiguous as to its application to other procurement vehicles, such as the FSS [GSA's Federal Supply Schedule].

The bottom line of the Kingdomware decision is that the VA did not act arbitrarily and capriciously when it used GSA Schedule contracts without first determining the appropriateness of a set-aside for SDVOSBs or VOSBs.

The full decision can be downloaded here: Kingdomware Technologies, Inc. v. United States.

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GSA to pare back supply schedules, grow strategic sourcing

November 1, 2012 by

The General Services Administration may consolidate its 31 Federal Supply Schedules into eight, a top agency official said Wednesday.

GSA has floated the idea to industry groups and customer agencies of reorganizing the supply schedules program to make it easier for government buyers to navigate, Jeff Koses, GSA’s director of acquisition operations, said at a conference of the Coalition for Government Procurement.

“In some ways, schedules have become more complex to navigate than they were 10 to 20 years ago,” Koses said.

Reducing the number of schedules and grouping them into “families” could make it easier for agencies to find offered products and services, he said.

GSA announced earlier this year that it will use a “demand-based model” to phase out more than 8,000 contracts it identified as obsolete.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.federaltimes.com/article/20121025/DEPARTMENTS07/310250001/GSA-pare-back-supply-schedules-grow-strategic-sourcing?odyssey=nav%7Chead

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Challenges await GSA’s plan to cut agency contract fees

October 2, 2012 by

The General Services Administration, as part of its top-to-bottom review of its operations, is eying a cut in the fees it charges other agencies that use the pre-negotiated contracts in its multiple award schedules program. The move comes as the White House is considering directing agencies to take advantage of bulk buying through governmentwide strategic sourcing vehicles.

Acting GSA Administrator Dan Tangherlini earlier in September told a Senate panel that “several fees assessed by the Federal Acquisition Service on purchases made by other agencies could be reduced below their current levels without a negative impact on the operations of FAS.”

He then announced a new interagency group to review and develop recommendations on the overall fee structure for contracts and services that FAS provides, including lower fees to help agencies reduce administrative costs.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.govexec.com/contracting/2012/09/challenges-await-gsas-plan-cut-agency-contract-fees/58350/?oref=govexec_today_nl.

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GSA preparing new professional services vehicle

August 15, 2012 by

The General Services Administration is readying a new contracting program designed to help federal agencies buy complex professional services, from consulting to engineering.

The program, known as One Acquisition Solution for Integrated Services, or OASIS, is expected to have a $12 billion ceiling value, said Aliya Nagimova, a research analyst at Herndon-based Deltek, which analyzes the government contracting market. The GSA said in a statement that it has not determined the ceiling value.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/capitalbusiness/contract-to-watch-gsa-preparing-new-professional-services-vehicle/2012/08/10/efa22ff2-dfd3-11e1-a421-8bf0f0e5aa11_story.html

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