FAI | The Contracting Education Academy

June 13, 2011 By AMK

OFPP adds FPDS reporting requirements

The Office of Federal Procurement Policy published an all-too–familiar memo May 31, pushing agencies to ensure that the data reported in the Federal Procurement Data System is complete and accurate.

A Federal Acquisition Regulation rule requiring chief acquisition officers to certify that their previous fiscal year’s entries into FPDS are correct in a January report to OFPP, will now be augmented by a new rule, outlined in Administrator Dan Gordon’s memo (.pdf).

Come January, agencies will also be required to submit any acquisition-related updates to their agency’s general data quality plans to the Office of Management and Budget, through the OMB MAX community website.

“These updates should include, at a minimum, the steps agencies are taking to improve past performance reporting, in accordance with OFPP’s January 2011 memorandum,” wrote Gordon, “and other efforts to improve the quality of acquisition-related data and information.”

While the memo does not change the metrics for FPDS entry, it does provide standardized reporting templates and suggest sampling methodologies. Gordon asked agencies to stand up policies and internal controls to monitor procurement data quality and implement compliance controls for contractors. The memo also emphasized training, saying that OFPP will work with the Federal Acquisition Institute and Defense Acquisition University.

While FPDS has improved over the last several years, it hasn’t improved significantly, said Ray Bjorklund, senior vice president and chief knowledge officer at McLean, Va.-based FedSources, which was recently acquired by Deltek.

“It takes a lot of effort to make every one of the 3 million to 7 million contract actions as perfect as they can possibly be,” said Bjorklund. “It’s a lot of humans.”

There’s no reliable, automated way to take contract actions and transfer that information to FPDS–especially when considering the subjectivity that comes with product service coding.

“There aren’t enough checks and balances. It would be great if there was some decision support system that would help all these agencies really report the data very accurately and very completely, but it doesn’t exist and it would be very expensive to develop a decision report system like that,” said Bjorklund.

— by mbernhart – Fierce Government – June 7, 2011 – 7:04am at http://www.fiercegovernment.com/story/ofpp-adds-fpds-reporting-requirements/2011-06-07

For more:
– see the OFPP memo (.pdf)

April 13, 2011 By AMK

Legislation would reorganize Federal Acquisition Institute

House and Senate lawmakers have introduced legislation that would dramatically reorganize the Federal Acquisition Institute, the government’s training academy for civilian contracting professionals.

The 2011 Federal Acquisition Institute Improvement Act, introduced last week, would require that the school, through its board of directors, report directly to the Office of Management and Budget’s Office of Federal Procurement Policy.

The FAI director would be appointed by the OFPP administrator and report directly to the office’s associate administrator for acquisition workforce, the bill stated. The current hiring process is less formal, with consultation by General Services Administration, OFPP and FAI’s board of directors.

GSA now oversees the institute, although OFPP has a role choosing its leadership. The new bill would give OFPP a more active management role in running FAI.

All civilian agency training programs at the institute — including acquisition internship programs — would follow OFPP-issued guidelines, ensuring consistency in training standards, according to the legislation. The OFPP administrator would report annually to Congress on FAI’s projected budget needs and expense plans.

Established in 1976 under the Office of Federal Procurement Policy Act, the Federal Acquisition Institute is charged with training and developing the skills of the federal acquisition workforce. Critics say FAI has been underutilized because it lacks organizational clarity, is not funded as well as the more entrenched Defense Acquisition University and is only intermittently used by federal agencies.

“This legislation would make the federal government more efficient and saves tax dollars,” said Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., who introduced the bill in the House. “In the past decade, federal procurement spending grew by 155 percent while the acquisition personnel managing that spending grew by just 10 percent. We just don’t have the workforce to manage large, complex contracts and the Federal Acquisition Institute is not meeting our training demands.”

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, the bill’s lead sponsor in the Senate, noted legislation is needed for the acquisition workforce to keep pace with the massive growth in federal contract spending during the past decade.

“This level of spending requires professionally trained and invested acquisition personnel who can manage these huge expenditures while also guarding against the possibility of waste, fraud and abuse of taxpayer dollars,” Collins said. “The Federal Acquisition Institute Improvement Act would strengthen the FAI, which promotes career development and strategic human capital management for the entire civilian acquisition workforce.”

The Senate measure is co-sponsored by Sens. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii; Claire McCaskill, D-Mo.; and Scott Brown, R-Mass. A similar version of the legislation passed the Senate in the 111th Congress last December, but did not receive a vote in the House.

The bill also would provide enhanced and more consistent training for thousands of civilian contracting officers. FAI would be required to keep current governmentwide training standards and certification requirements and modify the programs when core competencies are not covered. In addition, career path information would be developed to encourage contracting officials to stay in federal positions for decades to come. The human capital efforts would be coordinated with the Office of Personnel Management.

To help standardize training for civilian and Defense acquisition employees, the Bush administration in 2005 moved the Federal Acquisition Institute to the campus of the Defense Acquisition University in Fort Belvoir, Va.

The Senate legislation is scheduled for a vote on Wednesday, April 13, by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

— by Robert Brodsky – GovExec.com – published April 11, 2011 at http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=47576&dcn=e_tma

February 22, 2011 By AMK

Jenkins to be FAI director

Donna Jenkins will be the next official director of the Federal Acquisition Institute.

Jenkins has been the acting director of FAI since last Aug. 23. She expects to get the new title Feb. 27.

The institute, which is under the auspices of General Services Administration, works to develop the federal acquisition workforce by providing training for civilian agencies’ employees.

Senators have pushed for reforms in the FAI. In 2010, the Senate passed Sen. Susan Collins’ (R-Maine) legislation to strengthen the institute with more authorities over the acquisition workforce training fund, as well as clearing up ambiguities about whom FAI reports to.

The legislation would also have put the choice of who would lead FAI into the hands of the administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy and move the director of the institute to the Office of Management and Budget’s procurement policy office. However, the House never considered the bill, and such a bill has not been introduced in the current Congress.

— by Matthew Weigelt – Federal Computer Week – Feb. 18, 2011 at 1:25 PM

February 4, 2011 By AMK

OMB calls for better communication with vendors to bust contracting myths

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued a lengthy memorandum on Feb. 2, 2011 outlining 10 myths commonly-believed by businesses about government contracting. The myths were compiled as a result of outreach sessions held by the Office of Federal Procurement Policy (OFPP) with industry representatives, acquisition professionals, agency procurement attorneys, and others to identify and address core misconceptions about communication between the government and industry during the pre-award acquisition process.

OMB pointed out that it wishes to address these misconceptions as a part of a “myth-busters” educational campaign, one of the key tenets of the OMB’s 25-Point Implementation Plan to Reform Federal IT Management.

OMB is calling for all agencies to develop “vendor communications plans” to provide for “clear, consistent direction to their workforce and industry partners about how to engage with industry prior to the award of contracts.”

OFPP is to work with the Federal Acquisition Institute (FAI), the Defense Acquisition University (DAU), and agency training practitioners to conduct an awareness campaign to eliminate unnecessary barriers to engagement.

Further, OFPP is pledging to work with federal agencies to identify best practices, training opportunities, samples of guidance, and other information that may be helpful in developing these communication plans. Suggested elements of the communications plans are:

1. Statement of agency commitment to: a) Communicate early, frequently, and constructively with industry; b) Include small businesses and subgroups of small businesses in communications with industry; c) Include vendors that the agency has not worked with in the past; d) Identify, in the agency’s published procurement forecast, which procurements are likely to involve opportunity for additional communication with industry; and e) Protect non-public information including vendors’ confidential information and the agency’s source selection information.

2. Identification of senior agency and bureau (if applicable) official responsible for promoting vendor engagement;

3. Brief description of efforts undertaken or planned to reduce barriers and promote engagement;

4. Criteria for identifying which acquisitions must include vendor input in the pre-award phase and the extent of the required engagement as a condition of approval by the agency’s investment review board (or similar body). At a minimum, acquisition plans for high-risk, large-dollar, and complex programs, such as those for major IT systems and for re-competitions that need to attract new entrants to ensure adequate competition, should include a comprehensive vendor engagement strategy that:

includes at least one industry day or a pre-solicitation or pre-proposal conference; and
allows for a reasonable amount of one-on-one engagement; and
allows time for discussions, as needed and in accordance with FAR Part 15, during the proposal evaluation process; or
requires a written justification as to why those steps are unnecessary.

5. Publication of engagement events to include industry days, small business outreach sessions, pre-solicitation conferences, RFP question and answer sessions, etc. These shall be posted and updated regularly using the existing “special notices” function on www.fedbizopps.gov and on other sites as identified by the agency.

6. Brief description of roles and responsibilities of the: a) Contracting Officer; b) Program Manager; c) COR/COTR; d) General Counsel; e) Ethics Officers; f) OSDBU; and g) Other Officials.

7. Training and awareness efforts for employees and contractors.

8. Links to existing policies.

9. Plans to follow-up with employees and industry representatives within 6 months of posting the vendor engagement plan, to further refine and improve communication, (e.g., post-award surveys of the contracting officers, program managers, and offerors for large, complex procurements, focus group meetings for general feedback).

A recap of the “Top 10 Contracting Myths” compiled by OMB appears below:

Misconception #1 – “We can’t meet one-on-one with a potential offeror.”

Fact – Government officials can generally meet one-on-one with potential offerors as long as no vendor receives preferential treatment.

Misconception #2 – “Since communication with contractors is like communication with registered lobbyists, and since contact with lobbyists must be disclosed, additional communication with contractors will involve a substantial additional disclosure burden, so we should avoid these meetings.”

Fact – Disclosure is required only in certain circumstances, such as for meetings with registered lobbyists. Many contractors do not fall into this category, and even when disclosure is required, it is normally a minimal burden that should not prevent a useful meeting from taking place.

Misconception #3 – “A protest is something to be avoided at all costs – even if it means the government limits conversations with industry.”

Fact – Restricting communication won’t prevent a protest, and limiting communication might actually increase the chance of a protest – in addition to depriving the government of potentially useful information.

Misconception #4 – “Conducting discussions/negotiations after receipt of proposals will add too much time to the schedule.”

Fact –Whether discussions should be conducted is a key decision for contracting officers to make. Avoiding discussions solely because of schedule concerns may be counter-productive, and may cause delays and other problems during contract performance.

Misconception #5 – “If the government meets with vendors, that may cause them to submit an unsolicited proposal and that will delay the procurement process.”

Fact – Submission of an unsolicited proposal should not affect the schedule. Generally, the unsolicited proposal process is separate from the process for a known agency requirement that can be acquired using competitive methods.

Misconception #6 – “When the government awards a task or delivery order using the Federal Supply Schedules, debriefing the offerors isn’t required so it shouldn’t be done.”

Fact – Providing feedback is important, both for offerors and the government, so agencies should generally provide feedback whenever possible.

Misconception #7 – “Industry days and similar events attended by multiple vendors are of low value to industry and the government because industry won’t provide useful information in front of competitors, and the government doesn’t release new information.”

Fact – Well-organized industry days, as well as pre-solicitation and pre-proposal conferences, are valuable opportunities for the government and for potential vendors – both prime contractors and subcontractors, many of whom are small businesses.

Misconception #8 – “The program manager already talked to industry to develop the technical requirements, so the contracting officer doesn’t need to do anything else before issuing the RFP.”

Fact – The technical requirements are only part of the acquisition; getting feedback on terms and conditions, pricing structure, performance metrics, evaluation criteria, and contract administration matters will improve the award and implementation process.

Misconception #9 – “Giving industry only a few days to respond to an RFP is OK since the government has been talking to industry about this procurement for over a year.”

Fact – Providing only short response times may result in the government receiving fewer proposals and the ones received may not be as well-developed – which can lead to a flawed contract. This approach signals that the government isn’t really interested in competition.

Misconception #10 – “Getting broad participation by many different vendors is too difficult; we’re better off dealing with the established companies we know.”

Fact – The government loses when we limit ourselves to the companies we already work with. Instead, we need to look for opportunities to increase competition and ensure that all vendors, including small businesses, get fair consideration.

— compiled and published by The Contracting Education Academy at Georgia Tech, Feb. 3, 2011.

July 28, 2010 By AMK

Senate committee approves acquisition institute bill

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee today approved a bill designed to strengthen the Federal Acquisition Institute.

The Federal Acquisition Institute Act (S. 2902) would reorganize the training institute to report to the Office of Federal Procurement Policy, which is in the Office of Management and Budget. OMB and the General Services Administration would have to tell Congress about FAI’s budgetary needs and necessary authorities to set governmentwide acquisition training standards.

The governmentwide training standards would include developing certifications, overseeing internship programs and managing rotation assignments for acquisition employees. The measure would also create information on a career in federal contracting to hire and then retain more government employees. FAI would also work with the Office of Personnel Management on workforce issues, according to the bill.

Similar to the Defense Department’s Defense Acquisition University, FAI works on career development and training the civilian acquisition workforce.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), the committee’s ranking member, introduced the bill because she said FAI gets much less support than DOD’s acquisition university.

The Senate still must vote on the bill before it would go to the House for consideration.

— by Matthew Weigelt – July 28, 2010 – Federal Computer Week

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