inter-agency contracting | The Contracting Education Academy

March 11, 2014 By AMK

Unauditable DoD, interagency activity are key financial issues

Major financial management problems kept the Government Accountability Office from providing an audit opinion on the federal government’s financial statements for fiscals 2013 and 2012.

“The federal government is not able to demonstrate the reliability of significant portions” of its consolidated financial statements for those years, the GAO says in a Feb. 27 report, citing material weaknesses in internal controls.

The Defense Department’s continued failure to produce auditable financial statements is one of the main reasons that GAO can’t offer an audit opinion, the report says. Another is the government’s inability to accurately reconcile activity between federal agencies.

Improper payments, and the inability of federal agencies to know their full extent, also represent a material weakness, the report says.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.fiercegovernment.com/story/unauditable-dod-interagency-activity-are-key-financial-issues/2014-03-04

June 13, 2013 By AMK

Tighter budgets mean bigger role for GSA

Dan Tangherlini wants more of your business — a lot more.

Installed by the White House a year ago as acting administrator of the General Services Administration to fix the scandal-rocked agency, Tangherlini ushered in a flurry of reforms to dial back conference spending, employee bonuses and accountability lapses at GSA.

Now, his focus is fixed on overhauling the way federal agencies buy goods and services. His aim is to redirect considerably more federal procurement spending through GSA contracts.

“Frankly, the system we have now, the way we structure ourselves now, the way we invest in certain things now, is not sustainable,” Tangherlini said in an hour-long interview with Federal Times editors and reporters. He said agencies will need to find ways to cut costs as much as possible without sacrificing their missions.

Last year, only about 12 percent of federal procurement spending that could have gone to GSA actually did, according to the agency. Tangherlini said his hope is that, within 10 years, the agency can get that figure closer to 90 percent.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.federaltimes.com/article/20130519/DEPARTMENTS07/305190006/Tangherlini-Tighter-budgets-mean-bigger-role-GSA

October 18, 2011 By AMK

OMB optimistic on effort to change contracting mentality

Office of Management and Budget officials believe agencies are ready to collaborate on multi-agency contracts in order to squeeze the most value out of their funds and lessen their employees’ workload.

“Particularly in this tight budgetary environment, agencies have told us they are eager for tools that can help them stretch a dollar further and do more with less,” Moira Mack, a spokeswoman for OMB, said Oct. 5.

Agencies have dealt long enough with interagency contracts that duplicate one another, Mack said.

“We’ve heard from both contractors and federal employees that, for too long, limited staff time has been wasted setting up dozens of duplicative contracts for the exact same items and services,” she said.

Dan Gordon, administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy, issued a memo in September requiring officials to justify interagency contracts and blanket purchase agreements before investing a lot of time in planning for the procurement. A potential interagency contract would first have to get approval from a senior procurement executive or chief acquisition officer.

Officials would also have to search through a federal website listing proposed interagency contracts. If they find one that suits their need, they should cancel their own contract idea. If no contract suits the need, they should gather support from among the agencies to determine interest in the community, which can possibly lead to bulk buying.

However, experts told FCW that OFPP will struggle with parts of its recent guidance on awarding new interagency contracts and building business cases for proposals.

Robert Burton, former deputy OFPP administrator and now partner at the Venable law firm, said Gordon’s guidance may push agencies toward curbing their own interagency contract awards. He said officials will avoid the homework that OFPP requires to write a business case for an interagency contract or a BPA.

Until now, only governmentwide acquisition contracts, which are for IT products and services, required business cases and approval from OFPP.

On the other hand though, the guidance could possibly cause agencies to launch stand-alone contracts without economies of scale, Burton also said. Agencies don’t like to lose control of their operations or money, and they don’t like paying a fee to use another agency’s contract.

Experts also said OFPP will have its hands full in getting agencies on board with the initiative. For instance, agencies may not jump on the idea of going to a website to see what other contracts are available already. Or agencies may use their writing skills to make a proposed contract seem justified. Mack disagreed though.

“The suggestion that agencies would avoid doing reasonable comparison shopping and cost benefit analysis is dead wrong,” she said. “This guidance will help agencies stop wasting time reinventing the wheel.”

She added that OFPP left out a lot of the bureaucracy to encourage agencies in the effort.

In a post on the OMBlog from Sept. 29, the day the OFPP guidance came out, Gordon wrote that agencies have not received the advantages of bulk buying because purchasing wasn’t done in concert.

“Too often in the past, agency spending for many commonly used items was fragmented across multiple departments, programs, and components, which means that agencies often spent time writing hundreds of separate contracts, with pricing that varies widely,” he wrote.

Mack said agencies have started to buy in bulk in recent years and most recently through governmentwide strategic sourcing contracts for office supplies and domestic shipping.

About the Author: Matthew Weigelt is a senior writer covering acquisition and procurement for Federal Computer Week. This article appeared on Oct. 6, 2011 at http://fcw.com/articles/2011/10/06/ofpp-interagency-contract-guidance-success.aspx.

October 17, 2011 By AMK

SBA proposals could make small-biz credit easier to get

The Small Business Administration is considering changes to its rules that would allow an agency spending its money through a task or delivery order to chalk up the awards to its own subcontracting plans, according to a Oct. 5 Federal Register notice.

Agencies could start to get credit toward their annual small-business subcontracting goals for their orders placed against multiple-agency contracts, a perk for agencies as procurement policy officials push strategic sourcing.

Each agency has to set its own annual goal to make sure that various types of small businesses have an opportunity to participate in its contracts.

Currently though, when purchases come through an inter-agency contract, the agency that holds the contract gets the credit. That applies to the General Services Administration Schedules contracts too.

For example, consider an agency that places an order against a governmentwide acquisition contract. Say a large company gets the award and subcontracts some of the work to a small business subcontractor. The agency that hosts the GWAC gets the credit for hiring a small business, not the agency placing the order.

Prime contracts work differently. If an agency awards an order placed on a GWAC directly to a small business, the purchasing agency gets the points.

Agency officials have told SBA they would like to get the small-business subcontracting credit when they’re spending the money. SBA is also considering giving discretion to the contracting officer from the agency that’s placing the order to establish the subcontracting goals related to the individual orders.

Officials also want real-time insight into subcontracting on interagency contracts. Contractor may have to report their subcontracts with small businesses to the host agency’s contracting officer for each order.

Currently, contractors are reporting to the agency twice a year at the most.

“Reporting on an order-by-order basis will allow the funding agency to receive credit towards its small-business subcontracting goals,” SBA writes in its proposal.

SBA is taking input on the proposal through Dec. 5.

In light of SBA’s changes, Dan Gordon, administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy, has pushed agencies to think beyond their own purchasing and, instead, buy with the government in mind.

Strategic sourcing gives the government leverage over the contractor in setting prices. A greater quantity of potential orders encourages contractors to lower prices.

Office of Management and Budget officials believe agencies want to use more interagency contracts in order to squeeze the most out of their funds and lessen their employees’ workload.

“Particularly in this tight budgetary environment, agencies have told us they are eager for tools that can help them stretch a dollar further and do more with less,” an OMB spokeswoman said Oct. 5.

SBA’s proposed change may make subcontracting goals slightly easier to meet, especially if agencies are turning more toward the interagency contracts, said Ken Dodds, senior attorney at SBA.

He said agencies would find it more difficult to meet subcontracting goals if they didn’t credit.

About the Author: Matthew Weigelt is a senior writer covering acquisition and procurement for Washington Technology. This article appeared Oct. 12, 2011 at http://washingtontechnology.com/articles/2011/10/12/sba-subcontracting-credit-multiple-agency-contracts.aspx?s=wtdaily_141011.

Search this Website