Daniel Gordon | The Contracting Education Academy

December 20, 2016 By AMK

President-elect Trump and federal procurement: Who woulda thunk it?

Those of us working around government contracting have the burden of operating way off in the wonky weeds.

procurement-is-percolating Normally, people outside the procurement system have no knowledge of or interest in government contracting. This can be frustrating for anyone who likes to have their work generate wider buzz, though for others the obscurity provides an opportunity to work with less distraction and hoopla.

President-elect Donald Trump is nothing if not a showman, so government contracting is far, far down any list of areas in which he might be expected to engage.

Keep reading Steve Kelman’s blog at: https://fcw.com/blogs/lectern/2016/12/kelman-trump-acquisition-issues.aspx

May 25, 2016 By AMK

Governmentwide contracts offer agencies newer technologies at a faster pace

Since the middle of President Obama’s first term, the Office of Management and Budget has sought to simplify procurement; more specifically, the types of procurement vehicles agencies use.

As anyone who has read the Federal Acquisition Regulation knows, federal procurement can be incredibly complicated, with a long list of rules, systems and procedures that at times add unneeded complexity.

In recent years, OMB has fought to simplify those processes, pushing agencies away from creating new contracts, instead relying on what’s already in place.

Dan Gordon, administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy (OFPP) during Obama’s first term, asked agencies to create a business case for standing up new multiple award contracts, also known as MACs. Gordon’s goal was simple: Cut out duplicate MACs and other multiple-award contracts that sold the same products or services and, instead, use established contracting methods.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.fedtechmagazine.com/article/2016/04/governmentwide-contracts-offer-agencies-newer-technologies-faster-pace

April 22, 2015 By AMK

Longtime procurement expert Dan Gordon set to retire

Come mid-summer, one of the workhorses of federal procurement is set to retire after decades of direct and advisory service to the government.

Dan Gordon, former administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy (OFPP) and now an associate dean at George Washington University Law School, told FCW in an interview that he has been gradually pulling back from his many advisory roles in the last few months with an eye to retiring by July.

“The goal for July 1 is full retirement,” he said, adding that after that he plans to focus on his continuing study of Chinese languages and then, whatever comes.

Looking back, Gordon said his enthusiasm for the federal government’s procurement system is undimmed, even in the face of the increasing complexity and technological changes that have many calling for reform of the system.

Keep reading this article at: http://fcw.com/articles/2015/04/15/gordon-set-to-retire.aspx

June 21, 2013 By AMK

Unraveling the facts about GWACs

Obama administration officials say there are too many IT procurement vehicles, and they want agencies to consolidate their buying around existing interagency contracts rather than launch new ones. There is even a strong case to cut back on current contracts, which officials say are often duplicative in what they provide for buyers.

Where does that leave governmentwide acquisition contracts (GWACs)?

In early 2012, the Office of Federal Procurement Policy (OFPP) issued rules requiring agencies that wanted to award their own multi-agency contracts (MACs) to submit a business case arguing why those contracts were necessary — something agencies that wanted to award GWACs have had to do for years.

“Agencies are required to balance the value of creating a new contract against the benefit of using an existing one, and whether the expected return on investment is worth the taxpayer resources,” said Dan Gordon, who was OFPP administrator at the time.

Following the 1996 Clinger-Cohen Act that authorized their creation, GWACs became a poster child of sorts for that kind of contract inflation. Many agencies were looking to create their own contracts as testimony to their procurement mojo in an era of huge growth in government IT acquisition. For vendors, GWACs were seen as a hunting license to pursue lucrative government IT business.

Keep reading this article at: http://fcw.com/articles/2013/06/07/feature-gwac-facts.aspx

March 20, 2013 By AMK

Bid protests are worth their costs, former OFPP chief says

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

Those of us working around government contracting have the burden of operating way off in the wonky weeds.

Since the middle of President Obama’s first term, the Office of Management and Budget has sought to simplify procurement; more specifically, the types of procurement vehicles agencies use.

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