GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service said in a FedBizOpps notice posted last Wednesday that IBM will help manage the Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS) and the System for Award Management (SAM) as well as migrate data and functionality to an updated version of the SAM system.
A recent Government Accountability Office report has taken the government to task for failing to properly implement empirically sound and evidence-based practices as part of their deliberative process.
To encourage evidence-based decision-making, the recent President’s Management Agenda laid out a new cross-agency priority goal—“Leveraging Data as a Strategic Asset”—to develop and implement a comprehensive federal data strategy. Over the course of the next year, with input from the full spectrum of government and non-government stakeholders, the first governmentwide data strategy will be developed, along with specific recommendations for implementation. Office of Management and Budget sought to inform this process by issuing a comment draft in June.
By most accounts, the commitment to an overarching federal data strategy is welcome and timely. Huge amounts of data collected and managed by the federal government can be applied in a large variety of ways to foster economic growth and social good.
Keep reading this article at: https://www.nextgov.com/ideas/2018/10/are-gsas-bold-data-management-and-transparency-moves-right-moves/152043/
The General Services Administration (GSA) created this new National Interest Action (NIA) to the NIA field in the FPDS in conjunction with an agreement between GSA and the Department of Homeland Security.
Effective 9/13/18 through 12/15/18, this new NIA Code will be used strictly for reporting purposes related to Hurricane Florence.
In addition to the date range noted above, FPDS system details for this new NIA are:
Any FPDS system questions or problems may be directed to the Federal Service Desk (FSD) at https://www.fsd.gov.
“Acquisition reform has been on everyone’s agenda for many, many years, decades. There have been proposals in the Congress, there has been changes to the regulations. This has been a very, very active area for a long time,” said Bill Woods, director on the Contracting and National Security Acquisitions Team at GAO, in an agency podcast.
The report evaluated federal agency acquisition improvements against 89 recommendations made by the Acquisition Advisory Panel in 2007 and divided the areas of improvement into three “buckets” that represent the acquisition life cycle: requirements and definitions; competition and pricing; and contractor oversight.
“One is in the requirements, definition process of actually deciding. What is it does the agency want? What does it need, and what’s the best way of getting what we need?” said Woods.
Keep reading this article at: https://www.federaltimes.com/acquisition/2018/09/17/3-big-problems-continue-to-dog-federal-procurement/
Here’s what GAO found:
Congress and the executive branch have taken numerous actions to address key issues the Acquisition Advisory Panel identified in its 2007 report, but these actions have not eliminated some enduring challenges. The figure below presents the key issues the Panel addressed in relation to the life cycle of a typical contract as identified by GAO:
Three of the key issues, and the corresponding challenges, align with specific phases in the contracting life cycle:
GAO also found that agencies are sometimes using bridge contracts — which GAO has generally defined as either extensions to existing contracts or new short-term, sole-source contracts — to avoid a lapse in service caused by delay of a follow-on contract award. In some instances, bridge contract awards delay opportunities for competition and can place the government at risk of paying higher prices for multiple years. The figure below depicts how an Army bridge contract for computer support services planned for 12 months was extended to 42 months.
Further, GAO’s work shows that agencies have not fully embraced initiatives and techniques intended to reduce the prices they pay, including consolidated purchasing approaches and robust market research.
Three of the key issues, and the corresponding challenges, cut across all the phases of the contracting life cycle:
GAO did not make any new recommendations in its Sept. 12, 2018 assessment, but it has made numerous recommendations in the past. Federal agencies have agreed with many of GAO’s recommendations, and have implemented some of them, but not others. For example, GAO has previously made the following recommendations.
It its latest report, GAO reiterates its belief that all agencies should implement all of these recommendations.
See the GAO’s full report here: https://www.gao.gov/assets/700/694457.pdf
