end-of-year spending | The Contracting Education Academy

November 23, 2016 By AMK

End of administration rush, then quiet in federal IT contracting

Federal IT contracting will increase in the next couple of months as the Obama administration winds down, according to Professional Services Council (PSC) CEO David Berteau.

PSC However, that uptick will be followed by a lull in the first few months of the Trump administration as agencies find their footing under new leaders, Berteau added during a presentation at PSC’s Vision Federal Market Forecast Conference.

“The outgoing team is pushing stuff out the door while the incoming team can’t do anything,” he said. “That dynamic affects contracting.”

In January, contract obligations will go down, he added, saying. “That’s a significant trend historically.”

Keep reading this article at: https://fcw.com/articles/2016/11/16/contracting-forecast-2017.aspx

September 15, 2015 By AMK

Why federal CIO Tony Scott hates end-of-year IT spending spree

The end-of-the-year spending spree — in which agencies cram contract spending into the last quarter of the fiscal year — is a time-honored tradition in government contracting.

And Tony Scott, one of the Obama administration’s top tech officials, hates it.

Tony Scott is the federal government's Chief Information Officer and administrator of OMB’s Office of Electronic Government and Information Technology. — Tony Scott is the federal government’s Chief Information Officer and administrator of OMB’s Office of Electronic Government and Information Technology.

Since being named the federal chief information officer in February, the former corporate IT exec with stints at VMware, Microsoft and Disney said he’s come to learn about the “use-it-or-lose-it” nature of federal IT funding that fuels the annual spending spike.

“That’s just a really bad way to run IT,” he said August 26, 2015 during a presentation at the Digital Government Institute’s 930Gov conference in Washington.

The end-of-the-year pressure drives agencies into “exactly the wrong behavior,” Scott said: more short-term, even frivolous, spending and less of a focus on longer-term investments.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.nextgov.com/cio-briefing/2015/08/federal-cio-tony-scott-hates-end-year-it-spending-spree/119696

October 3, 2013 By AMK

How agencies bury noncompetitive procurements

I get a daily FedBizOpps feed of widget and gadget procurements and awards, and have spent literally hours the past two days poring through year-end sole source contract awards.

These are taxpayer dollars expended in an end-of-fiscal-year “use it or lose it” frenzy, but eyeballing these sole source awards is a manual process that requires opening multiple windows to divine what agencies bought and how much they spent.

In many cases agencies don’t disclose what they spent on the sole source contracts, which raises my reporter antenna.

The justification for these non-competitive awards all contain standard boiler plate language — only Vendor X can supply the gadget, software or service and if the contract is not extended or the gizmo acquired, vital operations will cease, often with a threat to national security.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.nextgov.com/defense/whats-brewin/2013/09/how-agencies-bury-noncompetitive-contracts/70834

Federal IT contracting will increase in the next couple of months as the Obama administration winds down, according to Professional Services Council (PSC) CEO David Berteau.

The end-of-the-year spending spree — in which agencies cram contract spending into the last quarter of the fiscal year — is a time-honored tradition in government contracting.

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