IG | The Contracting Education Academy

March 4, 2020 By cs

IG says Pentagon awarded $876 million in contracts meant for disabled vets to ineligible companies

Small businesses owned or run by disabled veterans may have been cheated out of hundreds of millions of dollars in Defense Department contracts by unscrupulous firms who were ineligible for the awards.

This information is contained in an Inspector General’s report released to the public on Feb. 20, 2020.

The IG’s audit found that the DoD “awarded $876.8 million in contracts to ineligible contractors and did not implement procedures to ensure compliance with the Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business (SDVOSB) subcontracting requirements after the contracts were awarded.”

At least 16 of the 29 contractors reviewed in the report who received business from the DoD on the basis that they met the disabled veteran requirements were found to be ineligible, the IG’s office said.

Unless the DoD conducts better oversight, “service-disabled veterans may be in jeopardy of not receiving contract awards intended for them, and the DoD will be at risk of misreporting the amounts for SDVOSB participation,” the 29-page report states.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.military.com/daily-news/2020/02/20/pentagon-awarded-876m-contracts-meant-disabled-vets-ineligible-companies-ig.html

January 20, 2020 By cs

Businessman who tried to ‘own every dog on the track’ sentenced for conspiring to bribe VA contract specialist

The Justice Department announced in Denver last week the sentencing of a businessman who engaged in a conspiracy with a Veterans Affairs’ contracting official to manipulate contract awards to benefit a consulting company that purportedly represented service-disabled veteran owned small businesses.

Anthony Bueno was sentenced to serve 30 months in federal prison, followed by 3 years of supervised release, for his role in a conspiracy to bribe a VA official so that clients of his company would gain an unfair advantage in the VA contracting process. Bueno was remanded into custody immediately after the sentencing hearing.

The VA’s contracting official, Dwane Nevins, previously pleaded guilty in September 2019 to every count of an indictment charging him with this scheme, including counts of conspiracy, receiving bribes, extortion, and criminal conflicts of interests. He is scheduled to be sentenced on February 19, 2020.

According to court records:

Bueno and his business partner, Robert Revis, agreed to help an undercover FBI agent, who was posing as a veteran and small business owner, bribe Nevins, a contracting specialist at the VA’s Network Contracting Office in Colorado.
As part of the bribery scheme, Bueno and Revis, working with Nevins, agreed to submit bids from small businesses owned by veterans disabled during military service (one of whom was the undercover FBI agent) under contract with Buenon and Revis’ consulting company so that federal contracts would be set aside for only those companies.
As Bueno explained to the undercover agent, the conspirators would then “own all the dogs on the track,” meaning their clients were guaranteed to get the contracts.
Bueno, Revis and Nevins worked to conceal the nature of the bribe payments by either kicking back to Nevins a portion of the payments made to the consulting company, or by asking the consulting company’s clients to pay Nevins directly for sham training classes related to federal contracting.

Robert Revis pleaded guilty in April 2019 to an Information charging him with a single count of supplementing the salary of a federal official. His sentencing hearing is scheduled for March 2, 2020. Bueno pleaded guilty on September 17, 2019.

Bueno has also pleaded guilty to conspiring to launder money arising from a completely separate wire fraud scheme in which he used false representations about investment opportunities to take over a million dollars from several victims. Sentencing in that case, pending before United States District Judge William J. Martinez, is scheduled for January 23, 2019.

The case was jointly investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Office of Inspector General, with substantial assistance from the U.S. Small Business Administration Office of Inspector General.

Source: https://www.justice.gov/usao-co/pr/businessman-sentenced-two-and-half-years-imprisonment-conspiring-bribe-veterans-affairs

December 16, 2019 By cs

Is government’s disability procurement program eroding?

The AbilityOne Commission faces compliance and resource challenges heading into the new year, according to its inspector general.

The federal organization responsible for ensuring that government agencies acquire goods and services from contractors that employ blind and other significantly disabled workers is in a tight spot, the AbilityOne Commission’s Inspector General found in a Dec. 2 report noting several management challenges that threaten the program’s stability.

The AbilityOne program, which has existed in some fashion since 1938, requires government agencies to make sure that a certain amount of their purchases come from contractors that fulfill the requirements for blind and disabled employees. But other procurement programs with conflicting priorities and a lack of sufficient resources mean that the program has experienced an “erosion” of its statutory authority.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.federaltimes.com/acquisition/2019/12/03/is-governments-disability-procurement-program-eroding-away

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

Small businesses owned or run by disabled veterans may have been cheated out of hundreds of millions of dollars in Defense Department contracts by unscrupulous firms who were ineligible for the awards.

The AbilityOne Commission faces compliance and resource challenges heading into the new year, according to its inspector general.

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.

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