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FAR rule implements higher dollar threshold for GAO’s protest jurisdiction over DoD, NASA, Coast Guard task orders

In a new rule announced May 1, the FAR Council implemented prior statutory changes to GAO’s bid protest jurisdiction. 

For task orders issued by the Department of Defense, NASA, or the Coast Guard, the rule provides that GAO will have jurisdiction only over task orders “valued in excess of $25 million.”

For civilian agencies, GAO continues to have jurisdiction over protests of task orders “valued in excess of $10 million.”  The rule also permanently repeals a pre-existing FAR clause that had set a September 30, 2016 expiration date on the ability to protest civilian agency task orders.

The new rule — codified as FAR 16.505(a)(10) — implements Section 835 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017, which directed the FAR Council to establish the new DoD, NASA, and Coast Guard threshold.  (The sunset date for protests of civilian agency task orders had previously been repealed by the GAO Civilian Task and Delivery Order Protest Authority Act of 2016.)  According to the FAR Council, its new rule is designed to “follow[] the statute exactly.”

Keep reading this article at: https://www.insidegovernmentcontracts.com/2018/05/new-far-rule-implements-increased-minimum-dollar-threshold-for-gaos-protest-jurisdiction-over-dod-nasa-and-coast-guard-task-orders/

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Former Native corporation exec alleges ‘sham companies’ get government contracts

The Afognak Village Corporation, with 1,000 shareholders, operates about two dozen companies with nearly 5,000 employees across the United States and overseas.

Its national and worldwide reach with hundreds of millions in contracts grew from subsidiaries that qualify for Small Business Administration contracting preferences with the Department of Defense, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Air Force, the Navy, the Army, the Marines, the Coast Guard and other agencies.

The company describes its shareholders as descended from the village of Afognak, which was on an island just north of Kodiak hit hard by the tsunami that followed the 1964 earthquake.

Its website features 382 job listings from Japan to Alabama and from Guantanamo Bay to Iraq. Afognak ranked 130th of the top 200 federal contractors in fiscal year 2015, according to a Bloomberg analysis, with $406 million in obligations.

The process by which it emerged as a federal contracting heavyweight is at the heart of a whistleblower lawsuit with legal bills in the millions that is slowly progressing in federal court in Alaska.

According to the lawsuit filed by a former company official, Afognak and its wholly owned subsidiary, Alutiiq, LLC, created “sham” companies to become eligible for more federal contracts than allowed.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.adn.com/opinions/2017/04/25/former-native-corporation-exec-alleges-sham-companies-get-government-contracts/

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Federal agencies sometimes struggle with creating postings on FedBizOpps

The Ides of March came early — at least for one employee of the Coast Guard’s Shore Maintenance Command contracting office.

While March 15 is known as a rather notorious day in history, March 1, 2017 may now take on special significance as well (at least among federal employees) as the day that a contracting official in Seattle apparently couldn’t figure out how to delete a posting from FedBizOpps (FBO), the website where virtually all federal contracts valued at $25,000 or more are posted daily.

Unable to delete a contract posting, the contracting official simply titled it, in all caps: “DON’T KNOW HOW TO DELETE THESE.”

This is a screenshot of the FedBizOpps posting created on Mar. 1, 2017 by the Coast Guard’s Shore Maintenance Command.

The words “DON’T KNOW HOW TO DELETE THESE” appear in the place where the title of a solicitation or contract award normally appears.  In this case, the posting indicates that the contract was awarded on December 2, 2013, and it was a sole source award.

The FBO notice also indicates that the contract was for architectural and engineering services, and that the contract number is HSCG50-14-R-PKUGH1.

In fairness, the contracting office at the Coast Guard’s Shore Maintenance Command isn’t the only contracting office that sometimes struggles with FBO postings.  Last August, the Denver-based National Park Service contracts office of the U.S. Department of Interior advertised a contract opportunity for “ASSES & DEVELOP LEADERSHIP TRAINING RDI.”

Presumably, the National Park Service wanted an assessment of their leadership training program performed when they created this FedBizOpps posting on Aug, 29, 2016.

The Coast Guard’s FBO posting can be seen at: https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=97fab27175e8c6b4216141611cbfce48&tab=core&_cview=0.

The National Park Service’s FBO posting is at: https://www.fbo.gov/?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=5fbc373ae5c98756189e3c2277541fbb&tab=core&_cview=1.

 

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Justice Dept. gets $9M back from bankrupt vendor

The federal government is exacting a little payback from Global Computer Enterprises in the form of a False Claims Act settlement.

After GCE applied for bankruptcy protection under Chapter 11 in September, the Labor Department and the General Services Administration had to pay the company $23 million to get access to financial systems and data.

Justice Dept. sealNow the Justice Department is collecting $9 million back after GCE and its owner Raed Muslimani agreed to settle charges brought against them.

DoJ said in a May 7 press release that GCE and Muslimani do not admit to any wrong doing, but agreed to pay the $9 million fine.

Justice brought up charges against GCE and Muslimani claiming the company “misrepresented and/or concealed that it was utilizing engineers and other employees who were expressly prohibited from working on the contracts due to their citizenship/immigration statuses,” in contracts with Labor, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), GSA, the Secret Service and the Coast Guard.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.federalnewsradio.com/130/3855194/Justice-gets-9M-back-from-bankrupt-vendor-GCE

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Sequestration pushes DHS contract spending to lowest level ever

The Department of Homeland Security’s contract spending continued to decline during the first year of sequestration and fell to its lowest level ever, according to a new independent analysis of government contract data.

DHS logoCompared to its much larger sister agency, the Defense Department, the fiscal 2013 decline in contract obligations by DHS was relatively modest, the latest annual review of Homeland Security spending by the Center for Strategic and International Studies found. While DoD’s contract dollars shrunk by 16 percent between 2012 and 2013, the decline in DHS was just 3 percent.

There are a couple of reasons for that, according to the authors. For one, DHS already had undergone a 12 percent reduction in dollars on contracts the year before, prior to the triggering of the automatic budget caps.

Also, the 2013 numbers got a boost from the sort of big-ticket purchase DHS only makes every few years: $500 million for the USCGC Munro, one of the large, high tech national security cutters the Coast Guard is building. Without that single contract, DHS spending would have dropped by 5.5 percent.

“What you also see is that the sequestration’s impact is not evenly distributed across the DHS components. In fact, it’s quite varied,” said David Berteau, the director of the national security program on industry and resources at CSIS.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.federalnewsradio.com/473/3645777/Sequestration-pushes-DHS-contract-spending-to-lowest-level-ever-

 

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