Infrastructure | The Contracting Education Academy

February 3, 2014 By AMK

Departing PBS chief intends to write about government inefficiencies

Sixteen months after being named to the post, Dorothy Robyn is leaving as head of the Public Buildings Service for the General Services Administration, a job in which she inked a deal with Donald Trump for a luxury hotel and led the search for a new FBI headquarters.

Her replacement is expected to be Norman Dong, who has been serving as acting controller at the Office of Management and Budget, Robyn said.

Robyn came from the Defense Department in September of 2012 to help right the ship after a scandal over convention-related expenses brought down the GSA’s previous leadership. She oversaw public buildings during a time of tightening budgets, prompting her to press agencies to occupy less space and forgo real estate that they did not need.

She and GSA administrator Dan Tangherlini teamed to take better advantage of under-performing government buildings, completing a deal to lease the Old Post Office Pavilion to Trump’s real estate firm and selling the West Heating Plant in Georgetown to a developer affiliated with the Four Seasons.

In an interview she said she was frustrated at the resistance of Congress to invest in cost-saving infrastructure improvements, as well as the accounting policies “ that make it difficult for us to follow best practices in the private sector.”

Rather than take a new job immediately ,Robyn said she would take time off to write about some of the government inefficiencies that she said were strangling the country’s infrastructure improvements and failing to reduce energy usage.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-business/wp/2014/01/29/dorothy-robyn-head-of-public-buildings-for-gsa-steps-down

May 23, 2013 By AMK

Contractors ask GSA to freeze cyber-related regulations

Federal suppliers are urging officials to stop computer security rulemakings for contractors until the government issues blanket cyber guidelines for all key industries in the fall. The argument is not that contractor-specific regulations are bad but that they could potentially conflict with the forthcoming national standards.

President Obama, as part of a February executive order, initiated a voluntary program for safeguarding life-sustaining networks, including energy, health care and water treatment systems. By November, the government must publish a draft set of standard policies and techniques, such as promptly installing antispyware updates. The government also must decide if and how these standards should be incorporated into federal contracts.

But — independently — multiple computer security mandates for contractors already are at various stages of development.

The separate cyber rules for government vendors are “all well intentioned. For the longest time, nobody was paying attention to cybersecurity. Now, everybody is paying attention to cybersecurity,” said Alan Chvotkin, executive vice president for the Professional Services Council, a trade association that represents contractors.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2013/05/contractors-ask-gsa-freeze-cyber-related-regulations/63244/?oref=nextgov_today_nl

May 25, 2012 By AMK

Agencies told to assume the worst in budget requests

The Obama administration still holds out hope of avoiding the across-the-board budget cuts required under the 2011 Budget Control Act, but it is nonetheless instructing federal agencies to begin preparing their fiscal 2014 budget requests assuming a 5 percent cut in discretionary spending.

Acting Budget Director Jeffrey Zients in a memo to agency heads on Friday said the coming spending plan will build on the Budget Control Act and the fiscal 2013 document’s framework, and hence “must continue to cut lower-priority spending in order to create room for the most effective investments in areas critical to economic growth and job creation, including education, innovation, infrastructure, and research and development.”

Keep reading this article at http://www.govexec.com//management/2012/05/agencies-told-assume-worst-budget-requests/55865/?oref=govexec_today_nl.

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