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/ 

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: , , , , ,

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 

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: , , , , ,

Federal IT funds circle the drain due to poor procurement policies

April 5, 2013 by

It may seem like a simple thing to fix — if the U.S. government wants more vendors to compete for contracts, just ask more companies to take part. However, those looking to reform the procurement process are running into snags that favor the status quo, and a new survey shows just how much money is wasted. A greater emphasis on open standards and boosting the role of CIOs are two possible solutions now being studied.

Federal agencies routinely pass up opportunities to improve information technology performance, and save money at the same time, by failing to seek vendor competition in the procurement process, according to a recent survey.

Federal IT professionals revealed that their agencies could save as much as $15.8 billion per year — about 20 percent of annual IT spending — by being more aggressive in utilizing multiple vendors in a more competitive environment for infrastructure projects.

The survey of 208 federal specialists was conducted in January by MeriTalk, an online community of public and private sector IT professionals.

Reporting on the survey in early March, MeriTalk said that 95 percent of respondents believe there are benefits to using more than one vendor in an area of their infrastructure, and 44 percent believe that adding a vendor drives down acquisition costs. However, five percent of agencies reported that their entire IT infrastructure uses just one vendor, and another 23 percent use just two or three.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/77636.html.

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

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 

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Former DoD undersecretary says acquisition reform is one of four budget-cutting strategies

February 8, 2013 by

The Wall Street Journal on Feb. 5, 2013 published an op-ed piece outlining a four-point strategy to cut the Defense Department’s budget.  Acquisition reform was prominenetly featured in the op-ed which was authored by Michele Flournoy, a Defense Department undersecretary from 2009 until last year.   Flournoy had been mentioned as a candidate for DoD Secretary until the Administration nominated Chuck Hagel.

Flournoy cites unnecessary overhead in DoD, offering the Defense Secretary’s office itself as an example.  From the mid-1990′s until now, staff within that unit has grown from 600 to nearly 1,000.

She also recommends that military health care spending be cut.  She advocates asking retirees who are now privately employed to obtain insurance through their employers.

Flournoy also believes that reactivation of the Base Realignment and Closure Commission could continued to drive down excess infrastructure costs.

Last but not least, Flournoy highlights the potential benefits of acquisition reform in several areas. “DoD is still operating with procurement timelines unresponsive to need, perverse incentives for program managers, inadequate numbers of trained acquisition professionals, and insufficient dialog with industry,” she writes.

Access to this Wall Street Journal on-line article requires a subscription at: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324156204578278491216627454.html?mod=WSJ_topics_obama 

 

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: , , , , ,

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.

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

DoD’s AT&L chief sees deal by Congress to delay spending cuts

November 7, 2012 by

The Pentagon’s top arms buyer on Monday said he expected U.S. lawmakers to agree in coming weeks to delay implementation of an additional $500 billion in automatic defense spending cuts that are due to start taking effect in January.

Undersecretary Frank Kendall for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics (AT&L) said the Defense Department had begun early planning for the process known as sequestration, which would cut the military’s budget by an extra $50 billion a year, on top of over $50 billion in annual cuts already on the books.

Planning was difficult because the Pentagon would not have much leeway to implement the cuts, Kendall said, noting that as written, the law would force the department to cut every budget account — except military personnel costs — and perhaps every single budget item, by just under 10 percent.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/05/us-budget-usa-pentagon-idUSBRE8A41CW20121105?feedType=RSS&feedName=domesticNews.

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: , , , , ,

Procurement documents show why acquisition reform isn’t easy

October 19, 2012 by

Two solicitation documents posted yesterday demonstrate how difficult information technology acquisition reform — a top priority for both the White House and Congress– can be.

The first, for cloud hosting services at the Interior Department, has been a regular on FedBizOpps, the government’s contracting website, for months. The request for proposal dropped July 18. By August 27 the department had received 474 questions from vendors about the solicitation. Rather than respond to those questions one by one, Interior opted to re-issue the RFP multiple times until all the concerns had been dealt with. What may be the final set of clarification came out Wednesday.

Questions from vendors are to be expected with any complex solicitation. Nearly 500 questions, however, might suggest some basic miscommunication between acquisitions staff, IT staff and vendors.

Keep reading this article at http://www.nextgov.com/emerging-tech/emerging-tech-blog/2012/10/tale-two-solicitations-it-reform-wont-be-easy/58718/?oref=nextgov_today_nl.

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: , , , ,

CACI International awarded $165 million Defense contract to automate procurement

June 11, 2012 by

Technology service provider CACI International Inc. was awarded a $165 million prime contract to provide software to automate procurement at the Defense Department, the company announced Tuesday.

Arlington, Va.-based CACI will provide information technology tools to help Pentagon acquisition agents coordinate financial logistics and contracting more effectively. The contract is for five years.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.nextgov.com/defense/2012/06/caci-international-awarded-165-million-defense-contract-automate-procurement/56089/?oref=ng-flyin.

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: , , , , ,
«Older Posts