cs | The Contracting Education Academy

November 20, 2018 By cs

Supply chain task force looks to keep ‘lemons’ out of the federal IT ecosystem

The Department of Homeland Security announced the roll out of its supply chain security task force on Information and Communications Technology.

At a Nov. 1 meeting of the Information Security and Privacy Advisory Board, a DHS official provided more details on the group’s composition and mission.

The task force will consist of approximately 60 members — drawn equally from the federal government, the tech sector and the communications sector, according to Emile Monette, a cybersecurity strategist at DHS and co-chair. Monette told FCW after the meeting that “most” of the group’s membership has been solidified, but that DHS is planning to provide more specifics in the next few weeks.

An executive committee, roughly half the full task force’s size, will meet in mid-November to begin laying out priorities and setting up work streams, such as tweaking to Federal Acquisition Regulation rules requiring the government to purchase certain IT and communications products from the original manufacturer or authorized resellers.

Keep reading this article at: https://fcw.com/articles/2018/11/01/supply-chain-dhs-lemons.aspx

November 19, 2018 By cs

How contracting officers want to use the new micropurchase threshold

Steve Kelman’s recent talk with feds reinforced his view that a $10,000 micropurchase limit opens up vast new acquisition possibilities.

Recently I did a webinar at the request of the General Services Administration’s Acquisition Gateway for professional services, as part of their Spotlight training series, on the new micropurchase threshold. As I have blogged before, the threshold has been raised to $10,000 for civilian agencies and, through a strange anomaly that hopefully will be corrected soon, to $6,000 for the Department of Defense.

This change will allow agencies to make procurements of up to $10,000 without (if they choose) competitively soliciting or evaluating proposals, though some of the agencies that have started using the authority have chosen to develop one-page requirements statements and solicit one-page competitive proposal. Regulations implementing this change are unfortunately not out yet, but a number of agencies — including the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Department of Homeland Security and GSA itself — have received class deviations to introduce the change now. However, the GSA class deviation applies only to GSA’s own purchases, not more broadly for any purchases using GSA vehicles.

Keep reading this article at: https://fcw.com/blogs/lectern/2018/11/kelman-micropurchase-ideas.aspx

November 16, 2018 By cs

CDC senior contracting officer sentenced for failing to disclose payments from contractor

As a result of his Nov. 8, 2017 indictment, Carlos Smiley was sentenced to federal prison on Nov. 15, 2018 for making false statements in his annual conflict of interest certification.

Smiley was a long-time federal employee, having served in positions at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama and at DoD’s Army Aviation Systems Command in St Louis, Missouri. At the time of his indictment, he was a senior contracting branch chief at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, and the president of the Atlanta chapter of the National Contract Management Association.

According to U.S. Attorney Byung J. “BJay” Pak, the charges and other information presented in court are:

On February 16, 2012 and January 7, 2013, Smiley completed Confidential Financial Disclosure Reports required by his position as a CDC Contracting Officer. Both times, Smiley answered “no” to the question asking whether he had received outside income.
Between September 2011 and January 2012, Smiley received several payments from A-TEK, a Virginia-based holding company that was seeking to do business with the CDC during that time.
CDC previously granted Smiley’s request to operate a company called Charisma III, Inc. as an outside business activity. After that, Smiley ostensibly received payments through Charisma III for real estate investment advice.
In 2012, A-TEK was awarded a single-source contract for the staffing of CDC field stations overseas. Smiley signed the contract as the approving contracting officer for CDC. A-TEK turned down the contract after learning of the relationship between Smiley and a representative of its holding company, who was also an A-TEK employee until fired for his conduct. Smiley failed to disclose six payments for a total of $30,600.
In 2015, CDC investigators confronted Smiley about the payments. He admitted to receiving them and to having invented the Charisma III officer whose fictitious name appeared on the purported agreement between Charisma III and the holding company for real estate investment advice.

Carlos Smiley of Roswell, Georgia was sentenced to three months in federal prison by U.S. District Judge Thomas W. Thrash, Jr. on November 15, 2018.

Smiley was also sentenced to one year of supervised release and 200 hours community service following his release from prison. He was also fined $5,000.

Smiley was convicted of the charge on July 19, 2018, after pleading guilty to making false statements.

The case was investigated by the Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Inspector General.

Source: https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndga/pr/cdc-senior-contracting-officer-sentenced-failing-disclose-payments-contractor

November 16, 2018 By cs

Captain from Georgia is latest Navy officer caught in ‘Fat Leonard’ corruption

The 350-pound Leonard Glenn Francis — known in Navy circles as “Leonard the Legend” for his wild-side lifestyle — spent decades cultivating relationships with Navy officers, many of whom developed a blind spot to his fraudulent ways. In the past three years, 33 defendants have been charged and 22 have pleaded guilty, many admitting to accepting things of value from Francis — also known as “Fat Leonard” — in exchange for helping the contractor win and maintain contracts and overbill the Navy by millions of dollars.

On Tuesday, Nov. 13, 2018, another Navy captain pleaded guilty to criminal conflict of interest charges and a former Navy master chief was sentenced to 17 months in prison today on corruption charges. The defendants are among the latest U.S. Navy officials to plead guilty and be sentenced in the expansive corruption and fraud investigation involving foreign defense contractor “Fat Leonard” Francis and his Singapore-based ship husbanding company, Glenn Defense Marine Asia (GDMA).

Jeffrey Breslau of Cumming, Georgia pleaded guilty to one count of criminal conflict of interest before U.S. District Judge Janis Sammartino of the Southern District of California. Breslau was charged in September 2018. Retired Master Chief Ricarte Icmat David of Concepcion, Tarlac, Philippines, was sentenced by Judge Sammartino, who also ordered him to serve a year of supervised release and pay restitution of $30,000. David was charged in August 2018 and pleaded guilty in September to one count of conspiracy to commit honest services wire fraud.

According to admissions made as part of his guilty plea, from October 2009 until July 2012, Breslau was a captain in the U.S. Navy assigned as director of public affairs for the U.S. Pacific Fleet, headquartered in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. As part of his duties, Breslau was involved in devising the Navy’s public affairs communications strategy, and provided public affairs guidance to Pacific Fleet components and other Navy commands. From August 2012 until July 2014, Breslau was assigned to the commanding officer for the Joint Public Affairs Support Element in Norfolk, Virginia, where he was responsible for leading joint crisis communications teams.

Breslau admitted that from March 2012 until September 2013, while serving in the Navy, he provided Francis with public relations consulting services, including providing advice on how to respond to issues and controversies related to Francis’s ship husbanding business with the Navy. These included issues related to port visit costs, allegations of malfeasance such as the unauthorized dumping of waste, disputes with competitors, and issues with Pacific Fleet and contracting personnel. During the course of his consulting agreement with Francis, Breslau authored, reviewed or edited at least 33 separate documents; authored at least 135 emails providing advice to Francis; provided at least 14 instances of “talking points” in advance of meetings between Francis and high ranking Navy personnel; and “ghostwrote” numerous emails on Francis’s behalf to be transmitted to Navy personnel. During the course of this consulting agreement, Francis paid Breslau approximately $65,000 without Breslau disclosing the agreement to the Navy, Breslau admitted.

As part of his guilty plea, David admitted that he was assigned various logistics positions with the Navy’s Seventh Fleet, including with the Fleet Industrial Supply Center in Yokosuka, Japan from June 2001 to July 2004; on the USS Essex from July 2004 to August 2007; on the USS Kitty Hawk from September 2007 to August 2008; and on the USS George Washington from September 2008 to July 2010. In these positions, David was responsible for ordering and verifying goods and services for the ships on which he served, including from contractors during port calls. Throughout this period, David received from Francis various things of value, including five star hotel rooms during every port visit, he admitted.

David further admitted that he repeatedly facilitated fraud by allowing Francis and GDMA to inflate the husbanding invoices to bill for services never rendered. For example, David instructed Francis to inflate invoices for the USS Essex’s anticipated November 2007 port visit to the Philippines. As David transitioned to a new position aboard the nuclear aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk, on or about May 8, 2008, Francis’s company paid approximately 84,637.00 Hong Kong Dollars (HKD) for hotel reservations at the Grand Hyatt Hong Kong for Navy personnel assigned to the USS Kitty Hawk including 10,396 HKD for David’s four-night stay in a Harbor View Room, David admitted.

Francis pleaded guilty in 2015 to bribery and fraud charges, admitting that he presided over a massive, decade-long conspiracy involving “scores” of U.S. Navy officials, tens of millions of dollars in fraud and millions of dollars in bribes and lavish gifts, including luxury travel, airline upgrades, five-star hotel accommodations, top-shelf alcohol, the services of prostitutes, Cuban cigars, Kobe beef and Spanish suckling pigs.

The case was investigated by DCIS, NCIS and the Defense Contract Audit Agency.

For earlier reports on this scandal, see: https://contractingacademy.gatech.edu/?s=fat

Source: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-us-navy-captain-pleads-guilty-and-former-master-chief-petty-officer-sentenced-sweeping

November 15, 2018 By cs

GAO reiterates that agencies must meaningfully consider price in ‘best value’ tradeoffs

In three related bid protest decisions made public in the last few weeks, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reaffirmed the principle that agencies must meaningfully consider price when making best value tradeoff decisions.

GAO sustained the protests, stressing that merely paying lip service to price while selecting a more expensive, higher-rated offeror is not sufficient — agencies must provide a rational explanation for why they have decided to pay a premium for the awardee’s technical superiority.

In Solers, Inc., B-414672.3 et al.; Technatomy Corporation, B-414672.5; and OGSystems, LLC, B-414672.6 et al., three disappointed offerors challenged the Defense Information Systems Agency’s (DISA) award of Multiple Award Task Order contracts to 14 contractors as part of the Systems Engineering, Technology, and Innovation program.

The solicitation provided that DISA would make award on a best-value tradeoff basis considering price and four technical factors that, when combined, were significantly more important than price. The agency made award to the 14 highest rated proposals in the non-price factors, opining — without elaboration — that “the technical merit of those proposals justifies paying a price premium over lower-rated, lower-priced proposals.” Indeed, throughout the evaluation process, the agency repeatedly noted — again without elaboration — that the awardees’ proposals were worth a premium.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.insidegovernmentcontracts.com/2018/11/hey-big-spender-gao-reiterates-that-agencies-must-meaningfully-consider-price-in-best-value-tradeoffs/

The Department of Homeland Security announced the roll out of its supply chain security task force on Information and Communications Technology.

Steve Kelman’s recent talk with feds reinforced his view that a $10,000 micropurchase limit opens up vast new acquisition possibilities.

As a result of his Nov. 8, 2017 indictment, Carlos Smiley was sentenced to federal prison on Nov. 15, 2018 for making false statements in his annual conflict of interest certification.

In three related bid protest decisions made public in the last few weeks, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reaffirmed the principle that agencies must meaningfully consider price when making best value tradeoff decisions.

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