justification and approval | The Contracting Education Academy

March 15, 2016 By AMK

Federal agencies are using last year’s ‘cyber sprint’ to justify sole-source IT contracts

Several federal agencies are not letting eligible companies compete for IT contracts, reasoning that only a current or other favored supplier can handle work demanded by a 30-day cybersecurity exercise.

But that exercise was supposed to have ended last July, and some of these so-called sole-source contracts issued by the departments of Homeland Security and Labor, among others, appear to strain, if not outright violate, federal contracting rules, according to procurement attorneys.

A keyword search through the government’s business opportunity website for “cyber” contracts posted July 30 or afterward turned up eight such noncompetitive deals. Because many contracts are not disclosed online or are published in unsearchable PDFs, the total number may be much higher, say federal acquisition experts.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2016/03/federal-agencies-are-using-last-summers-cyber-sprint-justify-sole-source-it-contracts/126528

February 4, 2015 By AMK

IG: Navy and Marine Corps reasonably justified IT contracts with little or no competition

The Navy and Marine Corps reasonably justified about $220 million worth of IT contracts that were solicited without full and open competition, says the Defense Department’s inspector general in a report issued Jan. 23.

The IG reviewed 66 Navy and Marine Corps IT contracts that used “other than full and open competition” to procure technology services, with 34 being sole-source contracts and the other 32 limiting competition in some way.

The 34 sole-source contracts were valued at $151.5 million, with the rest coming in around $70 million, the report says.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.fiercegovernmentit.com/story/ig-navy-and-marine-corps-justified-it-contracts-little-or-no-competition/2015-01-26

May 6, 2014 By AMK

‘Catastrophic’ network outage sets stage for ‘exception to fair opportunity’

The agency that manages the Pentagon Police Department and also runs networks and computers used the by the Office of the Secretary of Defense experienced a “catastrophic network technological outage” on Jan. 3, and it could take until January 2015 to complete the repairs, an obscure document on the Federal Business Opportunities website revealed.

That document, posted on May 2, disclosed that the outage experienced by the Pentagon Life Safety System Network and Life Safety Backbone left the Pentagon Force Protection Agency “without access to the mission-critical systems needed to properly safeguard personnel and facilities, rendering the agency blind across the national capital region.”

The Force Protection Agency provides security and services to 100 military buildings in Washington, Maryland and Virginia.

The agency estimated it would take six to 12 months to “effect repairs and to upgrade the network core to mitigate future outage risks.” Repairs include recovery of data after the catastrophic network technological outage and upgrade and replacement of switches and routers.

SRA International Inc. won a $56 million contract for the Life Safety System Network in 2008 that expired on April 30. The Force Protection Agency falls under the Washington Headquarters Service, which extended the SRA contract through Oct. 31, with a value of $7.3 million, and a four month option through Feb. 28, 2015, with a total value of $11.4 million.

See the current posting on FedBizOpps at https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&tab=core&id=7a4521d43f5f5c78b19eab99bed941ea&_cview=0.

Keep reading this article at http://www.nextgov.com/defense/2014/05/pentagon-police-agency-hit-catastrophic-network-outage/83842.

Several federal agencies are not letting eligible companies compete for IT contracts, reasoning that only a current or other favored supplier can handle work demanded by a 30-day cybersecurity exercise.

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