Interior Dept. | The Contracting Education Academy

December 16, 2020 By cs

GAO: Agencies should assess contracting workforce needs and purchase card fraud risk

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently examined how federal agencies use contracts and purchase cards to acquire goods and services to get urgently needed items after a disaster.

Specifically, GAO assessed selected agencies’ planning for contracting workforce needs and purchase card fraud risks related to disaster response.

Overall, here’s what they found:

Not all agencies planned for or assessed their contracting workforce needs for disaster response.
Only 1 of the 6 agencies assessed how purchase card fraud risks change during disaster response.

Contracting Workforce

The efforts of selected agencies to plan for disaster contracting activities and assess contracting workforce needs varied. The U.S. Forest Service initiated efforts to address its disaster response contracting workforce needs while three agencies — the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), the U.S. Coast Guard, and Department of the Interior (DOI) — partially addressed these needs. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) indicated it did not have concerns fulfilling its disaster contracting responsibilities.

Within three agencies examined, GAO found the following:

USACE assigned clear roles and responsibilities for disaster response contracting activities, but has not formally assessed its contracting workforce to determine if it can fulfill these roles.
The Coast Guard has a process to assess its workforce needs, but it does not account for contracting for disaster response activities.
DOI is developing a strategic acquisition plan and additional guidance for its bureaus on how to structure their contracting functions, but currently does not account for disaster contracting responsibilities.

Contracting officials at all three of these agencies identified challenges executing their regular responsibilities along with their disaster-related responsibilities during the 2017 and 2018 hurricane and wildfire seasons. For example, Coast Guard contracting officials stated they have fallen increasingly behind since 2017 and that future disaster response missions would not be sustainable with their current workforce.

GAO’s strategic workforce planning principles call for agencies to determine the critical skills and competencies needed to achieve future programmatic results. Without accounting for disaster response contracting activities in workforce planning, these agencies are missing opportunities to ensure their contracting workforces are equipped to respond to future disasters.

Purchase Cards

Among the five agencies GAO reviewed, plus the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), more than $20 million was collectively spent for 2017 and 2018 disaster response activities using purchase cards. GAO found that two of these six agencies — Forest Service and EPA — have not completed fraud risk profiles for their purchase card programs that align with leading practices in GAO’s Fraud Risk Framework. Additionally, five of the six agencies have not assessed or documented how their fraud risk for purchase card use might differ in a disaster response environment. DOI completed such an assessment during the course of our review.

An OMB memorandum requires agencies to complete risk profiles for their purchase card programs that include fraud risk. GAO’s Fraud Risk Framework states managers should assess fraud risk regularly and document those assessments in risk profiles. The framework also states that risk profiles may differ in the context of disaster response when managers may have a higher fraud risk tolerance since individuals in these environments have an urgent need for products and services. Without assessing fraud risk for purchase card programs or how risk may change in a disaster response environment, agencies may not design or implement effective internal controls, such as search criteria to identify fraudulent transactions.

Recommendations

As a result of its review, GAO made a total of 12 recommendations which address the need for three agencies to assess disaster response contracting needs as a part of overall workforce planning, and for five agencies to assess fraud risk for purchase card use in support of disaster response. GAO’s complete report can be found here: https://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-21-42#summary.

June 22, 2020 By cs

What should vendors expect from Q4 2020?

The fourth quarter sprint to the finish line of the 2020 fiscal year starts in about a week. So what can federal contractors expect?

According to Cameron Leuthy, a senior analyst at Bloomberg Government, professional services will be big, the coronavirus pandemic will present both complications and opportunities, and small businesses should already be getting ready.

To project what’s coming, analysts usually look to the previous year as a template. In 2019, Q4 included 30% of all obligations for the entire fiscal year. The Defense Department alone spent just shy of $120 billion. The departments of Housing and Urban Development, Interior and State each had more than 50% of their total obligations for 2019 in the fourth quarter. September was particularly lucrative, with $94.3B spent that month alone, 66% of which came from DoD.

There are a number of reasons for that, Leuthy said. Sometimes those reasons include policy, or maximizing potential leverage with foreign governments, in the case of the State Department. Sometimes funds are just deliberately held back from obligations, though there can be legal ramifications for that.

“Civilian agencies did hold back in some cases, because of the difference between the amount the administration asked for and the amount that Congress eventually ended up appropriating,” Leuthy said. “There’s also an incentive, and a prudent one, to hold back obligations during CRs and not get ahead of yourself.”

Keep reading this article at: https://federalnewsnetwork.com/contracting/2020/06/what-should-vendors-expect-from-q4-2020/

April 3, 2020 By cs

Simplified acquisition procedures afford agencies a lot of latitude, GAO decision reminds us

Not being included, or being purposely excluded, may remind some of adolescence, and may remind others of the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) simplified acquisition procedures.

The recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) decision in Phoenix Environmental Design, Inc. (Phoenix), B-418304 (March 2, 2020) deals with facing the latter form of disappointment.

The underlying purchase order in this matter was issued by the Department of the Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service, to address the Southeast Idaho National Wildlife Refuge Complex’s (NWRC’s) urgent need for herbicide. The Southeast Idaho NWRC’s need was compounded by an unplanned wildfire, which provided soil conditions that would facilitate the elimination of “cheatgrass,” an invasive species in the area. The Southeast Idaho NWRC expressed its need for fifteen gallons of herbicide to the agency on October 10, 2019, stating that it needed the herbicide by October 25 because of concerns that a freezing event would occur and eliminate the efficacy of the herbicide.

To respond to the pressing request, the agency solicited quotations as a small business set-aside pursuant to FAR §§ 13.003 and 13.104, which provide for simplified acquisition procedures in lieu of full and open competition. The agency solicited quotations from three vendors – one was a local vendor and the other two vendors were businesses that had submitted the lowest prices in response to a prior solicitation for herbicides. Phoenix had also submitted a bid for this prior solicitation, though it had quoted the second highest price. While Phoenix had, throughout the years, repeatedly notified the agency that it was interested in all of the agency’s herbicide requirements, the agency did not solicit a quotation from Phoenix.

The formal purchase order was issued to Wilbur-Ellis Co. on October 17 and on October 18 the Southeast Idaho NWRC picked up the herbicide from the vendor’s facilities. On October 22, Phoenix requested that the contracting officer cancel the award, and after being informed that such would not occur, on October 25, Phoenix filed a protest at the agency level. Following the denial of that protest, Phoenix filed the instant protest with the GAO.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/simplified-acquisition-procedures-93132/

A helpful explanation of what simplified acquisition is appears at: http://contractingacademy.gatech.edu/?p=2851

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

March 6, 2017 By AMK

Federal agencies sometimes struggle with creating postings on FedBizOpps

The Ides of March came early — at least for one employee of the Coast Guard’s Shore Maintenance Command contracting office.

While March 15 is known as a rather notorious day in history, March 1, 2017 may now take on special significance as well (at least among federal employees) as the day that a contracting official in Seattle apparently couldn’t figure out how to delete a posting from FedBizOpps (FBO), the website where virtually all federal contracts valued at $25,000 or more are posted daily.

Unable to delete a contract posting, the contracting official simply titled it, in all caps: “DON’T KNOW HOW TO DELETE THESE.”

**This is a screenshot of the FedBizOpps posting created on Mar. 1, 2017 by the Coast Guard’s Shore Maintenance Command.**

The words “DON’T KNOW HOW TO DELETE THESE” appear in the place where the title of a solicitation or contract award normally appears. In this case, the posting indicates that the contract was awarded on December 2, 2013, and it was a sole source award.

The FBO notice also indicates that the contract was for architectural and engineering services, and that the contract number is HSCG50-14-R-PKUGH1.

In fairness, the contracting office at the Coast Guard’s Shore Maintenance Command isn’t the only contracting office that sometimes struggles with FBO postings. Last August, the Denver-based National Park Service contracts office of the U.S. Department of Interior advertised a contract opportunity for “ASSES & DEVELOP LEADERSHIP TRAINING RDI.”

***Presumably, the National Park Service wanted an assessment of their leadership training program performed when they created this FedBizOpps posting on Aug, 29, 2016.***

The Coast Guard’s FBO posting can be seen at: https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=97fab27175e8c6b4216141611cbfce48&tab=core&_cview=0.

The National Park Service’s FBO posting is at: https://www.fbo.gov/?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=5fbc373ae5c98756189e3c2277541fbb&tab=core&_cview=1.