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Federal circuit court confirms agencies’ obligations to prioritize commercial solutions

Palantir USG v. United States may prove to be one of the most significant procurement precedents of the decade.

Affirming the Court of Federal Claims, the Federal Circuit breathed new life into the government’s obligations under the Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act (FASA) to prioritize, to the maximum extent practicable, the acquisition of commercial and nondevelopmental solutions.

Weaning agencies off their historic preference for developmental solutions is critical now more than ever, as it is readily apparent that maintaining the United States’ technological and battlefield superiority depends on its ability to harness technologies from the commercial sector and become a more commercial-friendly business partner.

The decision will have the practical impact of requiring agencies to more carefully document their market research. Palantir will also provide useful leverage for companies seeking to eliminate (whether by negotiation or protest) solicitation provisions that are not accommodating to commercial vendors.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.mondaq.com/article.asp?articleid=737610

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VA official charged with taking bribes to help associates rig federal contracting process

Three men were arrested in Colorado on Wednesday of this week pursuant to warrants issued in connection with an indictment charging them with conspiring to pay and receive bribes in exchange for creating an opportunity to commit a fraud against the U.S.  Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). 

The defendants are also charged with paying and receiving bribes, or aiding and abetting the payment of bribes.

Dwane Nevins, a VA contracting official at the time of the alleged crimes, was separately charged in another count with extortion under color of official right and in two counts with violating the federal conflict of interest statute.

The following is alleged in the indictment:

  • Dwane Nevins — a small business specialist at the VA’s Network Contracting Office in Colorado — agreed to take bribes offered by Robert Revis, Anthony Bueno and an undercover FBI agent to help them manipulate the process for bidding on federal contracts with the VA.
  • Revis and Bueno, working with Nevins, agreed to submit fraudulent bids from service-disabled-veteran-owned small businesses under contract with their consulting company so that federal contracts would be set aside for only those companies.  As Bueno allegedly explained, they would then “own all the dogs on the track.” 
  • Nevins, Bueno and Revis worked to conceal the nature of the bribe payments by either kicking back to Nevins a portion of the payments made to their consulting company, or by asking their consulting company’s clients to pay Nevins for sham training classes related to federal contracting.

The indictment also alleges that, after complaining about not being paid by Revis and Bueno for his participation in the scheme, Nevins used his official position at the VA to extort approximately $10,000 from an undercover FBI agent, telling the agent that “the train don’t go without me.  You know what I mean?  I’m the engine.  I’m the caboose.  I’m the engine room.”  Nevins also allegedly told the undercover FBI agent: “This is a business and businessmen need to get paid . . . . so I can have my Christmas, you know what I’m saying?”

The indictment alleges that the conspirators attempted to rig the process related to two particular contracts, both of which related to medical equipment and not to the construction of any VA facilities.  The first contract related to the procurement of LC bead particle embolization products by a VA hospital in Salt Lake City, and the second contract related to the procurement of durable medical equipment for VA facilities located throughout the region.

The case was jointly investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Office of Inspector General, and the U.S. Small Business Administration Office of Inspector General.

Readers are reminded that the defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in a court of law.

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‘Unprecedented’ government spending spree picks up speed

The federal government is primed to spend as much as $300 billion in the final quarter of fiscal 2018 as agencies rush to obligate money appropriated by Congress before Sept. 30 or return it to the Treasury Department.

The spending spree is the product of the omnibus budget agreement signed six months late in March coupled with funding increases of $80 billion for defense and $63 billion for civilian agencies. The shortened time frame left procurement officials scrambling to find ways to spend the money.

Through August, defense and civilian agencies obligated some $300 billion in contracts. But to spend all the money appropriated to them by Congress, they may have to obligate well over $200 billion more in the final quarter of fiscal 2018, which ends in two weeks.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.nextgov.com/cio-briefing/2018/09/unprecedented-government-spending-spree-picks-speed/151347/

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Half of government and military employees used awful passwords for LinkedIn, report finds

Half of government and military employees were using easily crackable passwords as of 2012, according to a report released Wednesday.

That’s only slightly better than the 52 percent of the general public that was using passwords that were far too weak at the time, according to the report from the cybersecurity firm WatchGuard.

The report authors analyzed a data dump of about 117 million encoded passwords that were pilfered from the career networking site LinkedIn in 2012 and posted online in 2016. Among those 117 million passwords, WatchGuard found about 350,000 passwords linked with a .gov or .mil email address.

In some cases, the LinkedIn hackers had already decoded those passwords and published them in plain text. In other cases, the passwords were stilled “hashed,” which means they were converted into a long string of characters using a system that is non-random but still supposed to make it very difficult to convert the string back into a plain text password.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2018/09/half-government-and-military-employees-used-awful-passwords-linkedin-report-finds/151178/

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GAO to DoD: Fix ‘fourth estate’ inefficiencies

The Government Accountability Office is telling the Defense Department to clamp down on inefficiencies in its 19 agencies and 8 field activities — collectively known as the “Fourth Estate.”

While DoD spends billions annually on these defense agencies and DoD field activities to maintain business functions, it “does not comprehensively or routinely assess the continuing need” for them, according to a report published last week by the watchdog agency.

The Defense Department has agreed to act on GAO’s five recommendations to fix the problems. However, the DoD official who signed off — Chief Management Officer John Gibson — is reportedly being terminated by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis for non-performance.

A former U.S. Air Force finance official with a long defense industry resume, Gibson is the first-ever CMO. The job was established last year in the largest reorganization of the DoD since the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.defensenews.com/pentagon/2018/09/11/gao-to-dod-fix-fourth-estate-inefficiencies/

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