Contract Data | The Contracting Education Academy

February 27, 2018 By AMK

Buy American, Hire American: Will it impact contractors’ ability to store data offshore?

Buy American and hire American.

The concept is easy, but the implementation can be far more complicated, particularly in the current government contracting world where waivers to those requirements have become common.

In an attempt to strengthen the commitment to buying American and hiring American, on January 26, 2018, a bipartisan group of ten Senators sent a letter to President Trump urging him to “keep the promises” that he had made in April 2017 to buy American and hire American. The letter follows Senators Rob Portman (R-OH), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Chris Murphy’s (D-CT) introduction of the bipartisan BuyAmerican.gov Act of 2018 on January 9, 2018.

This new legislation seems to be an effort to codify President Trump’s April 18, 2017, Buy American and Hire American Executive Order (the Executive Order), and slow what the BuyAmerican.gov Act Press Release calls the “excessive number of waivers” to the Buy American laws. Since President Trump signed the Executive Order, much has been written about the potential effects of that Executive Order. However, the potential impacts on government contractors who maintain or store data relating to their performance of federal government contracts have been largely disregarded.

To date, nothing in the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) prohibits contractors from storing contract-related data offshore — i.e., outside the United States. Some federal agencies have included an obligation for bidders to disclose their intentions regarding data storage if they are successful and awarded a contract, but these efforts have not been consistent across federal agencies. States have been the most aggressive in terms of policing a contractor’s ability to store state contract data offshore. Seven states have statutes or regulations that prohibit contractors from storing state contract data outside the United States. Multiple other states have regulations or include provisions in their solicitations that require bidders on state contracts to disclose where the contractor intends to store the state’s data.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/buy-american-hire-american-will-it-19180/

October 5, 2017 By AMK

The case for evidence in government

Although the U.S. government presides over what collectively must be one of the world’s largest data repositories, its capacity to use that data to build citizen trust and make informed, evidence-based decisions is severely constrained.

As explained in an enlightening report recently issued by the bipartisan Commission on Evidence-Based Policymaking (CEP), the mere existence of data is a necessary but not sufficient condition for creating empirical evidence to inform decisions throughout the full lifecycle of public programs—enactment, funding, operation, reform, termination.

The digitization of many facets of various activities the government funds through its $4 trillion annual budget has resulted in a data explosion at federal agencies. But that data needs to be synthesized into actionable information to satisfy taxpayers’ demands for better results and greater transparency. The CEP report makes clear that much remains to be done to achieve that goal and provides a comprehensive plan to improve access to federal data, strengthen privacy protections and expand the public, private and academic research communities’ capacity to analyze data.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.govexec.com/excellence/promising-practices/2017/09/case-evidence-government/141363

September 21, 2017 By AMK

Here’s how the government could better track contract spending

All legal entities in the world should subscribe to a common identification system, so the public can track their relationships, according to a new report.

Doing so could disrupt the monopoly Dun & Bradstreet has on the identification numbers contractors use to work with the federal government. But if the public and federal government want to better understand where money goes, they’re going to need to use a common identification system, the report from records giant Lexis Nexis and the Data Foundation, a government-transparency focused advocacy group, argued.

When government agencies track awards to contractors, they sometimes use their own identification systems for internal purposes. In the U.S., federal procurement officers also use Dun & Bradstreet’s “DUNS Number” to tag every contractor; those businesses are required to register for their own number through Dun & Bradstreet itself. But those contractors also use proprietary ID tags, and often both groups silo their identification system by the industry the business is in.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.nextgov.com/big-data/2017/09/heres-how-government-could-better-track-contract-spending/141012

April 26, 2017 By AMK

Changes coming to SAM.gov

The General Services Administration (GSA) is planning to test a new version of the System for Award Management (SAM.gov).

This means that plans GSA made as far back as 2001 may be realized sometime in 2018.

At present, SAM.gov is the federal database where vendors register to do business with the government. When it went live in mid-2012, SAM was introduced as portal where, over time, several different government databases would be consolidated. Federal Agency Registration (FedReg), the Online Representations and Certifications Application (ORCA), and the Excluded Parties List System (EPLS) were among the systems to be first consolidated under the SAM umbrella.

The 2012 introduction of SAM initially was delayed and, once launched, many problems were encountered by vendors and government agencies alike. Since then, SAM experienced a data breach in 2013, cost overruns, accessibility issues, and periodic interface difficulties with SBA’s small business database.

GSA now plans to resume work on the original vision for SAM: the consolidation of as many as 10 websites.

A new test site, at beta.sam.gov, reportedly is to launch between July 1 and Sept. 30, 2017.

The objective of the consolidated web site is to reduce the federal contracting burden on contractors and government officials alike by creating a single place to access a range of data, including contractor registration information, contract award data on prime contractors and subcontractors, and information about companies excluded from pursuing government work.

Eventually, the functions of 10 existing sites — including SAM.gov, the Federal Procurement Data System (fpds.gov); Federal Business Opportunities (fbo.gov), the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act Subaward Reporting System (fsrs.gov), and the Federal Awardee Performance and Integrity Information System (fapiis.gov) — will become a part of the SAM beta site. Once testing is completed, all of the added functionality will become a part of a new SAM.gov site. The sites that are merged into SAM.gov then will be retired.

Improvements, such as search features, will continue to be made to existing sites as the new site is being tested, GSA says.

April 10, 2017 By AMK

POGO: Contracts need to be posted online

The third week of March was Sunshine Week, the one week out of the year when there is a coordinated effort by experts to highlight topics related to federal and state open records laws, the public’s right to know, and freedom of the press.

There were numerous events around Washington, DC, as well as in cities and on college campuses around the country. The Project On Government Oversight (POGO) is a proud participant and works hard annually to bolster federal openness because “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.”

Sunshine Week, however, is not just about talking about open government and cool events. It’s also about action. Last week, Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO) introduced the “Contractor Accountability and Transparency Act of 2017” (S. 651), which POGO and eight other bipartisan groups supported.

The bill will expand the contracting information available on USASpending.gov (which now only offers summaries of contracts), make the contract information more accessible and readable, and help reduce Freedom of Information Act backlogs.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.pogo.org/blog/2017/03/contracts-need-to-be-posted-online-mccaskill-sunshine-transparency.html

Buy American and hire American.

Although the U.S. government presides over what collectively must be one of the world’s largest data repositories, its capacity to use that data to build citizen trust and make informed, evidence-based decisions is severely constrained.

All legal entities in the world should subscribe to a common identification system, so the public can track their relationships, according to a new report.

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