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Agencies are relying more on alternatives to contractor suspension and debarment

Annual report shows that exclusions from doing business with the government have decreased in recent years, yet are still up from 2009.

The number of contractor suspensions and debarments in fiscal 2018 was nearly double that of 2009, when an interagency committee started formally tracking them, but federal agencies are also increasingly relying on alternative measures to resolve disputes, according to a new report.

In fiscal 2018, agencies surveyed by the Interagency Suspension and Debarment Committee reported 480 suspensions (temporary exclusions when an investigation is ongoing), 1,542 proposed debarments and 1,334 debarments (exclusions for a set period of time after an investigation or legal proceedings against a contractor), according to the committee’s annual report released Tuesday. This is about twice the activity level reported in fiscal 2009. However, since fiscal 2014, the number of suspensions and debarments has been decreasing.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.govexec.com/oversight/2019/11/agencies-are-relying-more-alternatives-contractor-suspension-and-debarment/161157/

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Millions flow to Pentagon’s banned contractors via a back door

Some of the world’s largest companies have benefited from a little-known law that lets the Defense Department override decisions barring contractors accused or convicted of bribery, fraud, theft, and other crimes from doing business with the government.

International Business Machines Corp., Boeing Co., BP Plc, and several other contractors have received special dispensation to fulfill multimillion-dollar government contracts through “compelling reason determinations.” That process allows the Defense Department in rare cases to determine that the need to fulfill certain contracts justifies doing business with companies that have been suspended from government work.

The 22 determinations were released by the General Services Administration at the request of Bloomberg Government, allowing for the first collective examination of the cases and the system that allowed them.

The determinations, also referred to as waivers or overrides, included contracts to provide food services for Defense Department personnel at an Army base in Afghanistan, “vital” web-hosting services for an agency that serves the Pentagon and the U.S. intelligence community, and aviation fuel sold to the Defense Logistics Agency.

Keep reading this article at: https://about.bgov.com/blog/millions-flow-pentagons-banned-contractors-via-back-door/

See further analysis at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/charlestiefer/2018/08/05/study-of-waivers-of-federal-contractor-debarments-leads-to-review-of-major-criminal-charges/#654bac3c6ac3

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DHS OIG issues report on the suspension and debarment program

On January 25, 2018, the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) issued report no. OIG-18-41, “DHS Needs to Strengthen Its Suspension and Debarment Program” (Report).  While many may feel that the review, findings, and recommendations of the DHS suspension and debarment program are of little or no consequence to them, there are some interesting takeaways that may provide some important signals to the government contracting community at large.

This Report stems from an October 2016 request by the ranking member of the House Committee on Homeland Security, Representative Bennie Thompson (D-MS), who requested the OIG review the suspension and debarment practices of DHS. As set out in the Report, the OIG found that:

  1. The DHS Suspension and Debarment Instruction is outdated and is missing needed information and guidance;
  2. DHS did not adequately document a majority (5 of 7) of administrative agreements approved between fiscal year 2012 and February of 2017;
  3. DHS did not have a centralized system to track suspension and debarment activities, which may have contributed to DHS’s inaccurate FY2016 reporting of suspension and debarments;
  4. For an 8-month period, FEMA’s suspension and debarment staff did not promptly update government-wide systems to reflect debarments and administrative agreements; and
  5. Staffing levels within DHS may be hindering efficient and effective handling of suspensions and debarments.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=87d53f1f-3a3f-4efe-8dbe-cc61998edecd

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GSA decision to debar contractor is overruled after judge calls it ‘arbitrary and capricious’

The former government contractor who was busted for hacking into a non-federal competitor’s network is back.

Ariel Friedler, the founder and former CEO of Symplicity Corp. — a government contractor who had run FedBizOpps.gov and other contracting platforms for much of the 2000s — won a significant suspension and debarment decision in the Washington D.C. District Court.

The court ruled that the General Services Administration (GSA) unfairly debarred Friedler in 2015 because GSA did not give him notice of all of the grounds for his debarment and an opportunity to respond to each of them prior to the agency’s final debarment determination.

The court ruled that GSA “relied on Friedler’s alleged post-conviction conduct in reaching the conclusion that he should be debarred but failed to notify him of these purported violations — a failure that is unquestionably improper under the applicable provisions of the Federal Acquisition Regulation. And because this court cannot reasonably find that [GSA] would have debarred Friedler on the basis of his criminal conviction alone, the court cannot conclude that the agency’s error in relying on the two additional grounds without providing notice was harmless.”

Keep reading this article at: https://federalnewsradio.com/reporters-notebook-jason-miller/2017/10/gsa-decision-to-debar-contractor-is-overruled-after-judge-calls-it-arbitrary-and-capricious/

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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.

 

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