GAO | The Contracting Education Academy

July 25, 2019 By AMK

Audit: Pentagon acquisition reform requires more leadership attention

The Defense Department has made progress implementing acquisition reforms in recent years, but leadership needs to pay more attention for meaningful change to take place, according to an audit released this week by the Government Accountability Office.

The audit was completed at the request of the House and Senate Armed Services committees, which sought to determine whether and how the Pentagon was handling numerous acquisition reforms included in the 2017 and 2018 National Defense Authorization Acts.

The answers are a mixed bag, according to GAO auditors.

On one hand, military departments have taken on a larger share of the decision-making authority for major multibillion-dollar, multiyear defense acquisitions since 2016. That year, the Office of the Secretary of Defense oversaw 30 major defense acquisition programs, compared to 58 overseen by military departments. As of March, OSD only oversaw nine major defense acquisition programs, while military departments oversaw 80.

OSD oversees only those programs that are high-risk, joint or had significant cost or schedule growth, like the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program or the Army’s Integrated Air and Missile Defense program.

Keep reading article at: https://www.nextgov.com/policy/2019/06/audit-pentagon-acquisition-reform-requires-more-leadership-attention/157548/

June 26, 2019 By AMK

GAO highlights ‘responsibility’ exception to ‘late is late’ rule

Recent GAO protest decision highlights the case law-derived exception to the “late is late” rule for responsibility-related proposal documents.

TAKEAWAYS

The FAR “late is late” rule requires rejection of untimely filed proposal documents, except in limited circumstances.

Under GAO case law, proposal documents relating to a contractor’s responsibility may be submitted any time prior to award, regardless of contrary statements in the solicitation.

A recent GAO protest decision confirms that agencies are required to evaluate responsibility documents received after the proposal deadline and before award or earlier down-select evaluation.

Under the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) “late is late” rule, a government contractor’s proposal must be received by the government by the time stated in the solicitation. If a proposal document is even one second late, it cannot be accepted by the government. The FAR provides very limited exceptions to this rule. Specifically, it states that where a proposal is received before the award and the contracting officer determines that accepting it will not delay the procurement, the government may accept the untimely proposal if: (1) it was received electronically at the initial point of entry to the government infrastructure at least one working day before the proposal submission deadline, or (2) if it was under government control before the proposal submission deadline, or (3) if only one proposal was received. These narrow FAR-based exceptions apply infrequently.

Government Accountability Office (GAO) case law, however, provides another exception to the “late is late” rule, for responsibility-related proposal documents. GAO has long held that solicitation requirements regarding present responsibility of the contractor, governed by FAR Subpart 9.1, may be satisfied at any time before award and that a solicitation cannot convert a matter of responsibility into one of proposal acceptability. This means that if a contractor submits responsibility-related documents after the deadline for receipt of proposals, the government must evaluate those documents if they are relevant to the government’s determination of the contractor’s responsibility. The government is not obligated to give offerors an opportunity to provide missing documents that relate to responsibility, but it may not refuse to consider information that it has in its possession, even if it was received after the proposal submission deadline.

Keep reading article at: https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/gao-highlights-responsibility-exception-58695/

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/

May 8, 2019 By AMK

GAO wants to build capacity to focus on science and technology, cybersecurity

The Government Accountability Office is on track to achieve its optimal workforce capacity of 3,250 full-time employees this year, but it’s still having trouble keeping up with the quantity of lawmaker requests around new technologies and cybersecurity.

Comptroller General of the United States and head of the GAO Gene Dodaro told the Senate Appropriations Legislative Branch subcommittee that those are two of GAO’s four major priorities for 2020, where it needs to increase capacity to meet rising demand.

The agency requested a funding increase of $57.8 million more than it received in fiscal 2019, for a total of $647.6 million, in order to build these capacities. Dodaro reminded lawmakers that in 2018, actions on GAO recommendations saved the government $75.1 billion, a return on investment of more than $124 for every $1 GAO received in funding.

Keeping up in science and technology

Part of that increased budget, Dodaro said, would go toward the agency’s new Science, Technology, Assessment and Analytics Team, built on top of the capabilities that GAO already has. That’s part of his first priority: Increasing the speed and capability of GAO to evaluate science and technology issues for Congress. Dodaro said technological changes are happening more rapidly now, and the agency needs to be able to keep up.

“The emergence of science and technology issues is transforming the way that we are learning, communicating, educating,” Dodaro said. “It’s changing the very face of warfare in the future, whether you’re talking artificial intelligence, quantum computing, cryptocurrencies. Blockchains are changing the nature of how financial transactions are conducted, and financial advice.”

But the bright, shiny tech buzzwords of the moment aren’t the only things that fall under GAO’s science and technology umbrella. Dodaro said GAO also looks at antibiotic-resistant bacteria, weapons systems like the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, healthcare, 5G and nanotechnologies.

“With the expansion of our team in this area, we can help Congress avoid spending millions of dollars that aren’t going to produce the technologies everybody thought it was going to produce,” Dodaro said.

Keep reading article at: https://federalnewsnetwork.com/hearings-oversight/2019/04/gao-wants-to-build-capacity-to-focus-on-science-and-technology-cybersecurity/

May 3, 2019 By AMK

GAO: Agencies must consider information gathered by reverse auction providers

What are federal contractors supposed to do when FedBid (now Unison) requests additional information related to a proposal and the awarding agency ignores that information in its awarding decision?

GAO recently held that the agency must consider all information gathered by reverse auction providers.

In BCW Group, LLC, B-417209, 2019 WL 1398813 (Comp. Gen. Mar. 27, 2019), BCW protested the Department of Interior, Bureau of Indian Affairs’ award to another offeror. The award was the result of a reverse auction conducted by FedBid, on behalf of the agency.

The reverse auction was for work related to procurement, installation, and maintenance of Promethean ActivPanels, or other similar products. BCW’s bid included a general verification that it complied with “all terms listed by the Buyer[,]” but the bid did not specifically state that it included the required one-year maintenance. At the close of the reverse auction, a representative of FedBid reached out to BCW asking the following:

Is your bid price correct, complete (meaning all items requested are included in your bid) and inclusive of all costs the Buyer would incur if your bid is selected?

In response, BCW confirmed that the price included, among other things, “once a year maintenance for 3 years on the panels I install.”

The agency subsequently reviewed the five submitted bids and chose a different offeror because BCW’s offer, although lower priced, did not specifically mention the required maintenance. The agency did not review the exchange between FedBid and BCW, where BCW confirmed that maintenance was included in its offer, because the contracting officer was “not aware that FedBid” had the post-bid exchange with BCW regarding the maintenance issue. BCW protested that its lower priced bid should have been accepted because it met the procurement requirements.

Keep reading article at: www.smallgovcon.com/gaobidprotests/gao-agencies-must-consider-information-gathered-by-reverse-auction-providers