IG | The Contracting Education Academy

September 26, 2019 By cs

Watchdog warns on GSA’s contracting data trial

The General Services Administration’s watchdog again raised concerns over plans to move ahead with a three-year Transactional Data Reporting (TDR) pilot program, at the expense of two other contract provisions it says helps federal buyers save money.

This is the case that GSA made for Transactional Data Reporting when it issued a proposed rule in 2015 to capture transactional data on procurements across all of its government-wide acquisition vehicles.

In comments on the GSA’s strategy to extend its TDR pilot for another year after its planned conclusion this December, the GSA Office of Inspector General said it remains concerned TDR could cripple the agency’s buying schedules, which include IT Schedule 70, because it has yet to produce useable pricing data. The comments were dated July 26 but publicly released this week.

GSA’s TDR pilot collects pricing data from vendor volunteers, including prices paid by government customers, for products and services sold under agency contracts. It hopes the data gathered could level out pricing for federal buyers. When it was launched, the GSA OIG characterized the pilot as “the most significant change to GSA’s Multiple Award Schedules Program in over 20 years.” However, it warned at the beginning of the pilot and again in recent comments that the effort had produced no significant measurable pricing data federal agencies could use.

Keep reading this article at: https://fcw.com/articles/2019/08/28/watchdog-warns-pricing-trial-rockwell.aspx

September 10, 2019 By cs

Patience you must have: No timeline for massive cloud contract, says DoD chief

Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said he has no “firm timeline in mind” for completing a review of the Pentagon’s controversial enterprise cloud procurement and hinted that other factors may delay the program.

Speaking to reporters Sept. 5, Esper said the Department of Defense Office of Inspector General’s review of the Pentagon’s handling of the procurement, potentially worth $10 billion over 10 years, also hinders the future of the program.

“I saw where another DoD IG is doing another review. So in some ways, the timeline isn’t completely mine,” Esper told reporters Sept. 5.

Legislators, including Republican Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, have written letters to Esper asking for the award to be delayed until after the inspector general had completed its review. In early August, after pressure from Congress and reported criticism of the program by President Donald Trump, Esper announced he was going to review the contract. At the time, Pentagon spokesperson Elissa Smith said “no decision will be made on the program until he has completed his examination.”

However, Esper emphasized that the Pentagon needed cloud technology to develop better artificial intelligence capabilities, but did not specifically say that JEDI was the solution.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.federaltimes.com/it-networks/cloud/2019/09/06/patience-you-must-have-no-timeline-for-massive-cloud-contract-says-dod-chief

August 30, 2019 By cs

NOAA, NASA launched next-gen satellite with known issues, scrubbed performance metrics from contract

The main instrument of the GOES-R next-generation satellite constellation wasn’t working before launch but officials sent it into space anyway.

Persistent problems with the premier sensors of the GOES-R series satellites — designed to provide the next generation of weather observation for North America — were identified before launch and not properly tested or resolved, according to a new inspector general report.

Further, the Commerce Department IG found evidence that program managers changed the evaluation criteria for the contractor after the issues were identified—metrics that would have led to a 40-75% reduction in payment had they remained.

The $11 billion GOES-R series of satellites includes GOES-16—launched November 2016—and GOES-17—launched March 2018—as well as the pending GOES-T and GOES-U still in production. The satellite constellation is equipped with a set of next-generation sensors to better predict weather patterns, including the Advanced Baseline Imager, or ABI, the “most essential instrument for mission success of the GOES-R satellites,” according to the IG.

However, shortly after GOES-17 entered orbit, the cooling system for the ABI instrument malfunctioned, “severely degrading” the amount of data the satellite could collect, NOAA officials said at the time.

“This is a serious problem,” Steve Volz, administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service, or NESDIS, said during a May 2018 briefing with reporters. “This is the premier Earth-pointing instrument on the GOES platform and the 16 channels … are important elements of our observing requirements.”

Keep reading this article at: https://www.nextgov.com/emerging-tech/2019/08/ig-noaa-nasa-launched-next-gen-satellite-known-issues-scrubbed-performance-metrics-contract/159276/

June 19, 2019 By AMK

GSA out of compliance on improper payments, watchdog finds

Financial controls designed to minimize agency payments to undeserving parties are not being fully followed by the government’s landlord, the General Services Administration, according to a watchdog report released on Friday.

GSA in fiscal 2018 failed to comply with two of six requirements in the amended Improper Payments Act, said the agency’s inspector general. Specifically, the agency “did not publish an accurate improper payment estimate in its Fiscal Year 2018 Agency Financial Report and … [did not] publish accurate and complete improper payments data in its Fiscal Year 2018 Agency Financial Report,” said the report by the team under IG Carol Fortine Ochoa. “GSA’s risk assessment process is flawed and its procedures for the Do Not Pay initiative contain significant deficiencies and are ineffective.”

Federal law requires agencies with programs susceptible to significant improper payments to estimate and report on them annually to the Office of Management and Budget, in addition to implementing corrective actions. But if a program’s estimated and reported improper payments are below the statutory thresholds for a minimum of two consecutive years, the agency may request relief from the annual reporting requirements.

The IG reviewed GSA’s improper payments in rental of space and purchase cards in fiscal 2017 and 2018, having found $109 million in total improper payments in 2017, and then $16.7 million in 2018 in the rental of space program only. The new report’s review covered August 2018 through February 2019.

Keep reading article at: https://www.govexec.com/management/2019/06/gsa-out-compliance-improper-payments-watchdog-finds/157447

The General Services Administration’s watchdog again raised concerns over plans to move ahead with a three-year Transactional Data Reporting (TDR) pilot program, at the expense of two other contract provisions it says helps federal buyers save money.

Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said he has no “firm timeline in mind” for completing a review of the Pentagon’s controversial enterprise cloud procurement and hinted that other factors may delay the program.

The main instrument of the GOES-R next-generation satellite constellation wasn’t working before launch but officials sent it into space anyway.

The Defense Department Inspector General’s office sought to clear up confusion regarding its review of the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure contract Tuesday, offering reporters a public statement days after Defense officials referenced the IG in statements to the press.

Financial controls designed to minimize agency payments to undeserving parties are not being fully followed by the government’s landlord, the General Services Administration, according to a watchdog report released on Friday.

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