The Contracting Education Academy

Contracting Academy Logo
  • Home
  • Training & Education
  • Services
  • Contact Us
You are here: Home / Archives for EPA

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.

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: Army Corps of Engineers, Coast Guard, disaster recovery, disaster relief, EPA, FEMA, Forest Service, fraud, Fraud Risk Framework, GAO, Interior Dept., risk management, USACE

November 19, 2020 By cs

What a Biden administration will mean for contractors

For federal contractors, much will change under a Biden administration.

Some changes will return the familiar.  Some wags are already calling the next presidency a third Obama term.  That may or may not be accurate, much less fair to Biden.

One thing is certain, the government won’t retreat one dollar from its $500 billion-a-year contracting appetite.  Beyond that, the pH of the procurement waters will change.

The agency to watch, if you’re a contractor, and by extension a contracting officer, is the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs.  This Labor Department unit is the source of many policies that apply to contractors, starting with ensuring contractors follow what used to be called employment standards.  Mainly that contractors don’t, in their own employment practices, violate equal opportunity laws and regulations.

Administrations use it as one of the levers of power the general public doesn’t see, unlike, say, the Environmental Protection Agency or Justice Department.  Its policies apply to contracts and contractors.

Keep reading this article at: https://federalnewsnetwork.com/tom-temin-commentary/2020/11/what-a-biden-administration-will-mean-for-contractors/

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: DOJ, DOL, EPA, federal contractors, government spending, Justice Dept., Labor Dept., OFCCP, spending, White House

September 3, 2020 By cs

Agencies achieving frictionless acquisition in variety of ways

Years of criticism directed at federal agencies has created a culture of risk aversion. That’s something which Soraya Correa, Department of Homeland Security chief procurement officer, said needs to change.

“We’ve got to allow people to do things differently, to try new [things], and so take those chances,” she said Tuesday. “And we the leadership in this profession and across all the professions need to support our people a little bit better to make them feel that confidence that they can take some calculated risks and move the ball forward.”

Correa was part of the Accelerating Acquisition in the Dynamic Workplace webinar, sponsored by FedInsider, which gathered agency acquisition leaders to talk about inefficiencies in federal procurement and what they would like to be done differently.

One of Correa’s initiatives, DHS’ Procurement Innovation Lab, has set an example of creating “safe spaces” for innovation. Its PIL boot camp has proved popular with other agencies and DHS  and its components have awarded a cumulative 52 PIL procurement projects from fiscal 2015, when the lab started, to 2019, according to the agency.

Several speakers referenced the Contractor Performance Assessment Reporting Systems (CPARS), an electronic workflow that reports and rates contractor performance, at the General Services Administration. Correa said DHS is championing artificial intelligence to track past performance with CPARS data, but the system is “daunting.”

Keep reading this article at: https://federalnewsnetwork.com/acquisition/2020/08/agencies-achieving-frictionless-acquisition-in-variety-of-ways/

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: CPARS, DHS, EPA, frictionless acquisition, GSA, Procurement Innovation Lab, risk, risk averse

March 9, 2020 By cs

HHS’ shutdown of assisted acquisition services remains painful, wasteful

The Department of Health and Human Services is not just failing its agency and contractor customers but also, once again, demonstrating why “the government” gets maligned as wasteful, insular and uncaring.

With its decision to end its assisted acquisition services through its Program Support Center, HHS is putting more than $1 billion in contracts at risk. It’s hanging large and small agencies out to dry — ranging from the Defense Department to the Environmental Protection Agency to the Office of Special Counsel — by canceling contracts and giving them little time to prepare for the changes.  And it is withholding payment to potentially hundreds of small and large contractors, putting some at risk of closing down or facing employee layoffs and additional contract costs.

At the same time, HHS is paying tens of thousands of dollars in prompt payment penalties to those same contractors for avoidable mistakes, inching ever closer to what experts would call waste and abuse.

“Since the beginning, HHS PSC was inflicting pain on themselves,” said Ron Robinson, a former program manager for Copper River Technologies, which provided contract support and financial analyst services until December when PSC ended its three-year contract two years early. “It is horrible the way HHS has handled this. They should be held accountable, and it doesn’t seem like anyone wants to. There wasn’t communication. There was a lack of transparency. You see that time and again with them suspending warrants and putting four people on administrative leave without telling them why.”

Keep reading this article at: https://federalnewsnetwork.com/reporters-notebook-jason-miller/2020/03/hhs-shutdown-of-assisted-acquisition-services-remains-painful-wasteful/

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: abuse, accountability, acquisition workforce, assisted acquisition services, communication, DoD, EPA, HHS, late payment, mistakes, prompt payment, PSC, risk, transparency, waste

September 18, 2019 By cs

HHS’s suspension of acquisition services leaves outside agencies and contractors in limbo

It’s been three months since the department announced it was closing down its shared services operations, and many questions remain unanswered.

The Health and Human Services Department’s decision to wind down its acquisition services for outside agencies has left customers scrambling to fill the void and a number of unanswered questions.

HHS announced in June that it would no longer offer assisted acquisition services for non-HHS customers through its Program Support Center, and gave them until Sept. 30, 2020, to find alternative providers.  The center works for HHS and 19 other agencies on a fee-for-service basis, administering more than $1.4 billion in contracts per year, Federal News Network reported. Also, the department put four officials associated with the Program Support Center on paid leave between April and June, Bloomberg News reported.

“As the result of an internal review that is ongoing, [the Program Support Center] has determined that it does not have the policies, procedures, or internal controls necessary to conduct assisted acquisitions for agencies outside of HHS,” said Melissa McAbee, acting head of contracting at PSC, according to a report in Bloomberg News.  As of mid-June, the center was managing 250 contracts for agencies besides HHS, including the Defense Department and Environmental Protection Agency.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.govexec.com/management/2019/09/hhss-suspension-acquisition-services-leaves-outside-agencies-and-contractors-limbo/159870/

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: acquisition workforce, assisted acquisition services, contract administration, DoD, EPA, GSA, HHS

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • Next Page »

Popular Topics

abuse acquisition reform acquisition strategy acquisition training acquisition workforce Air Force Army AT&L bid protest budget budget cuts competition cybersecurity DAU DFARS DHS DoD DOJ FAR fraud GAO Georgia Tech GSA GSA Schedule GSA Schedules IG industrial base information technology innovation IT Justice Dept. Navy NDAA OFPP OMB OTA Pentagon procurement reform protest SBA sequestration small business spending technology VA
Contracting Academy Logo
75 Fifth Street, NW, Suite 300
Atlanta, GA 30308
info@ContractingAcademy.gatech.edu
Phone: 404-894-6109
Fax: 404-410-6885

RSS Twitter

Search this Website

Copyright © 2023 · Georgia Tech - Enterprise Innovation Institute