disaster recovery | The Contracting Education Academy

December 16, 2020 By cs

GAO: Agencies should assess contracting workforce needs and purchase card fraud risk

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently examined how federal agencies use contracts and purchase cards to acquire goods and services to get urgently needed items after a disaster.

Specifically, GAO assessed selected agencies’ planning for contracting workforce needs and purchase card fraud risks related to disaster response.

Overall, here’s what they found:

Not all agencies planned for or assessed their contracting workforce needs for disaster response.
Only 1 of the 6 agencies assessed how purchase card fraud risks change during disaster response.

Contracting Workforce

The efforts of selected agencies to plan for disaster contracting activities and assess contracting workforce needs varied. The U.S. Forest Service initiated efforts to address its disaster response contracting workforce needs while three agencies — the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), the U.S. Coast Guard, and Department of the Interior (DOI) — partially addressed these needs. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) indicated it did not have concerns fulfilling its disaster contracting responsibilities.

Within three agencies examined, GAO found the following:

USACE assigned clear roles and responsibilities for disaster response contracting activities, but has not formally assessed its contracting workforce to determine if it can fulfill these roles.
The Coast Guard has a process to assess its workforce needs, but it does not account for contracting for disaster response activities.
DOI is developing a strategic acquisition plan and additional guidance for its bureaus on how to structure their contracting functions, but currently does not account for disaster contracting responsibilities.

Contracting officials at all three of these agencies identified challenges executing their regular responsibilities along with their disaster-related responsibilities during the 2017 and 2018 hurricane and wildfire seasons. For example, Coast Guard contracting officials stated they have fallen increasingly behind since 2017 and that future disaster response missions would not be sustainable with their current workforce.

GAO’s strategic workforce planning principles call for agencies to determine the critical skills and competencies needed to achieve future programmatic results. Without accounting for disaster response contracting activities in workforce planning, these agencies are missing opportunities to ensure their contracting workforces are equipped to respond to future disasters.

Purchase Cards

Among the five agencies GAO reviewed, plus the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), more than $20 million was collectively spent for 2017 and 2018 disaster response activities using purchase cards. GAO found that two of these six agencies — Forest Service and EPA — have not completed fraud risk profiles for their purchase card programs that align with leading practices in GAO’s Fraud Risk Framework. Additionally, five of the six agencies have not assessed or documented how their fraud risk for purchase card use might differ in a disaster response environment. DOI completed such an assessment during the course of our review.

An OMB memorandum requires agencies to complete risk profiles for their purchase card programs that include fraud risk. GAO’s Fraud Risk Framework states managers should assess fraud risk regularly and document those assessments in risk profiles. The framework also states that risk profiles may differ in the context of disaster response when managers may have a higher fraud risk tolerance since individuals in these environments have an urgent need for products and services. Without assessing fraud risk for purchase card programs or how risk may change in a disaster response environment, agencies may not design or implement effective internal controls, such as search criteria to identify fraudulent transactions.

Recommendations

As a result of its review, GAO made a total of 12 recommendations which address the need for three agencies to assess disaster response contracting needs as a part of overall workforce planning, and for five agencies to assess fraud risk for purchase card use in support of disaster response. GAO’s complete report can be found here: https://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-21-42#summary.

June 25, 2020 By cs

Pentagon IG offers advice for effective contracting during pandemic

With billions of dollars in CARES Act funding yet to be spent and several billion more potentially in the appropriations pipeline, it’s far too early to tell how effectively the Defense Department is spending its share of the disaster funding.

**Click on image above to download the report.**

But according to the Pentagon’s inspector general, DoD — and its auditors — have more than enough experience with prior emergencies to know what to do, and what not to do, to make sure money is spent well even when contracts have to be executed quickly.

In a new special report, drawing on 36 earlier audits that dealt with contracting during previous emergencies, the OIG tries to outline what it considers best practices for contracting under time pressure.

“It is a very fast paced, ever changing environment right now with this pandemic. But what contracting officers are experiencing right now is similar to pressures that were present during past disaster response and relief efforts. So our intent here was to highlight best practices and lessons learned that really span a significant portion of time,” Theresa Hull, the assistant inspector general for audit acquisition, contracting, and sustainment said in an interview for Federal News Network’s On DoD. “Our reports go back to Hurricane Katrina in 2005 but also include the more recent hurricanes, Florence and Irma, and we highlighted four areas that the contracting community should be aware of: Communication and coordination; documentation, consistency in the contracting process, and staffing and training.”

Keep reading this article at: https://federalnewsnetwork.com/on-dod/2020/06/pentagon-ig-offers-advice-for-effective-contracting-during-pandemic/

The Contracting Education Academy at Georgia Tech has established a webpage where all contract-related developments related to the coronavirus (COVID-19) are summarized. Find the page at: https://contractingacademy.gatech.edu/coronavirus-information-for-contracting-officers-and-contractors/

May 19, 2020 By cs

Project management and COVID-19 recovery: Lessons from previous disasters

The rapid outbreak of COVID-19 has prompted an unprecedented response from all levels of government, across the country and around the world. As part of this response, local, state, and federal agencies sprang into action to help protect citizens from this potentially catastrophic biological threat while continuing to deliver services in communities nationwide.

As the initial public health threat hopefully subsides in the days and weeks ahead, many federal projects and programs will be launched to support longer-term COVID-19 economic recovery. These recovery efforts will affect people whose housing, utilities, and other life necessities are at risk, as well as entire industries whose existence has been disrupted by the COVID-19 threat.

While these efforts may be unparalleled in many ways, there are some lessons learned from previous disaster recovery efforts that can inform policy makers, federal project and program managers, and their executive sponsors in their work to help the nation recover from the effects of this extraordinary event.

The Project Management Institute’s 2020 Pulse of the Profession® research reveals that 11.4% of each dollar invested on projects is wasted due to poor performance — that’s $114 million for every $1 billion. There is a great deal at stake to ensure that pandemic response projects and programs are delivered as efficiently and effectively as possible.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.govexec.com/management/2020/05/project-management-and-covid-19-recovery/165298/

May 9, 2019 By AMK

FEMA showed weak mastery of contracts during hurricane response and recovery

Four agencies providing disaster relief following the triple hurricanes and California wildfires of 2017 failed to keep proper records of contracts with suppliers, rendering it impractical for the Government Accountability Office to fully track $5 billion in spending.

GAO’s report released on Wednesday examined 23 sample contracts let after the disasters by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Army Corps of Engineers, the Coast Guard and the Defense Logistics Agency. Its conclusion: the full extent of contracting related to the 2017 disasters is unknown due to Homeland Security Department’s irregular schedule for closing contracts and inconsistent use of standard contracting codes.

Disaster relief contracts for everything from ready-made meals to tarpaulins can be awarded prospectively—before anyone knows the date of a coming act of God—or after the storm or fire has rendered thousands homeless or living in damaged property.

But among the contracts studied as of June 30, 2018—following a record-setting displacement of 15 percent of the U.S. population from several natural events—GAO reviewed the three-fourths of the obligations that were let by FEMA and the Army engineers and found that the Homeland Security Department violated procedure with early closures of what are called national interest action codes. Those numbered codes, administered by the General Services Administration, allow agencies to track data on contract actions related to national emergencies, and are available on the Federal Procurement Data System-Next Generation to provide governmentwide insight into response and recovery efforts.

Keep reading article at: https://www.govexec.com/contracting/2019/04/fema-showed-weak-mastery-contracts-during-hurricane-response-and-recovery/156541/

January 10, 2019 By AMK

DoD says blockchain can help in disaster relief

The U.S. Department of Defense says blockchain technology has “enormous” potential in helping improve disaster relief efforts.

The Troop Support division of the Defense Logistics Agency held a meeting last month in Philadelphia to understand how blockchain could have helped its already “successful” efforts assisting in Puerto Rico after the devastating Hurricane Maria in 2017. The meeting was hosted by Troop Support’s Continuous Process Improvement (CPI) office.

“The potential is absolutely enormous,” said CPI management analyst Elijah Londo, according to a DLA report of the event. “Talk about blockchain, and you’ll hear experts comparing it to transforming trust or transactions in the same way the internet changed communication.”

Currently, the DLA tracks logistics processes through centrally managed systems, which makes it hard for involved parties to synchronize data and ensure they all are tracking correct and up-to-date information. By using blockchain technology, the agency could track data and thereby improve supply chain transaction processes and in-transit visibility of shipments, it said in the report.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.coindesk.com/us-defense-department-says-blockchain-can-help-disaster-relief