NASA | The Contracting Education Academy

August 30, 2019 By cs

NOAA, NASA launched next-gen satellite with known issues, scrubbed performance metrics from contract

The main instrument of the GOES-R next-generation satellite constellation wasn’t working before launch but officials sent it into space anyway.

Persistent problems with the premier sensors of the GOES-R series satellites — designed to provide the next generation of weather observation for North America — were identified before launch and not properly tested or resolved, according to a new inspector general report.

Further, the Commerce Department IG found evidence that program managers changed the evaluation criteria for the contractor after the issues were identified—metrics that would have led to a 40-75% reduction in payment had they remained.

The $11 billion GOES-R series of satellites includes GOES-16—launched November 2016—and GOES-17—launched March 2018—as well as the pending GOES-T and GOES-U still in production. The satellite constellation is equipped with a set of next-generation sensors to better predict weather patterns, including the Advanced Baseline Imager, or ABI, the “most essential instrument for mission success of the GOES-R satellites,” according to the IG.

However, shortly after GOES-17 entered orbit, the cooling system for the ABI instrument malfunctioned, “severely degrading” the amount of data the satellite could collect, NOAA officials said at the time.

“This is a serious problem,” Steve Volz, administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service, or NESDIS, said during a May 2018 briefing with reporters. “This is the premier Earth-pointing instrument on the GOES platform and the 16 channels … are important elements of our observing requirements.”

Keep reading this article at: https://www.nextgov.com/emerging-tech/2019/08/ig-noaa-nasa-launched-next-gen-satellite-known-issues-scrubbed-performance-metrics-contract/159276/

August 22, 2019 By cs

A ban on Chinese tech is on the books — are feds ready?

Federal agencies have less than a week to update their upcoming and in-process contracts to include provisions that prohibit telecommunications equipment or services — or components of equipment or services — that are produced by Huawei Technologies Company, ZTE Corporation, Hytera Communications Corporation, Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology Company or Dahua Technology Company.

The interim rule added to the Federal Acquisition Regulation Aug. 7 by the Department of Defense, General Services Administration and NASA notified agencies that they have until Aug. 13 to update their acquisitions to reflect the prohibition of products that are produced by companies with suspected links to the Chinese government.

The rule change is not unexpected, as the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act initially codified the prohibition on such acquisitions, but the new rule formally implements such requirements for federal agencies.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.federaltimes.com/acquisition/2019/08/08/a-ban-on-chinese-tech-is-on-the-books-are-feds-ready

August 14, 2019 By AMK

New rule bans government purchase of Chinese telecom gear

Three departments in charge of federal purchasing policy have unveiled an interim rule amending Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) to ban agencies from purchasing telecommunications and video surveillance equipment from five Chinese firms, including Huawei.

The interim rule from the General Services Administration, the Department of Defense and NASA took effect Aug. 13 and stems from a provision in the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) prohibiting federal agencies from purchasing telecommunications and video surveillance equipment, along with any “substantial or essential component of any system, or as critical technology as part of any system” from the Chinese tech firms or their affiliates. The regulation language will apply to all new contracts and procurements as well as existing indefinite delivery contracts, as well as options picked up for existing contracts.

While the NDAA does allow for the issuance of individual, one-time waivers to agencies, the rule requires contractors to identify as part of their offer any telecommunications equipment or services that will be provided to the government, including those provided by subcontractors. Acknowledging that such a rule could result in a heavy “information collection burden” on federal agencies, the three departments are updating the System for Award Management to allow contractors to disclose these parts and components on an annual basis.

Keep reading this article at: https://fcw.com/articles/2019/08/07/china-telecom-regulation-johnson.aspx?m=1

June 25, 2019 By AMK

OFPP issues 4th ‘myth-busting’ memo

The purpose of this memorandum is to improve awareness of vendor engagement strategies that Federal procurement thought leaders are using to create a more responsive buying process, modernize the acquisition culture, and deliver greater value to the taxpayer.

The memorandum also asks each Chief Financial Officers Act (CFO Act) agency to ensure it has designated an industry liaison to work with the agency’s Acquisition Innovation Advocate (AIA), the Office of Small Disadvantaged Business Utilization (OSDBU), and other key acquisition personnel to promote modern vendor communication practices and counter misconceptions that drive today’s risk aversion culture.

The President’s Management Agenda challenges agencies to deliver 21st century services by modernizing information technology, increasing transparency and accountability, and building a modem workforce. 1 To keep up with the rapidly accelerating pace of technological change, a number of agencies have sought better ways to communicate with industry so they can better understand the commercial marketplace, attract new contractors, and encourage current partners to use new processes and develop, test, and offer more modern solutions. Despite this progress, the pace of adoption has been limited relative to the total volume of activity that potentially could benefit from these efforts; only a fraction of our transactions are using these new ways of doing business. For this reason, the Office of Federal Procurement Policy (OFPP) is taking two steps to improve awareness of these modem communication practices.

First, OFPP is using its long-standing “myth-busting” campaign to spotlight how front line acquisition officials and managers have been challenging entrenched ideas about engagement between the public and private sectors. Attachment I highlights ten misconceptions related to innovative practices and showcases successful agency efforts. As additional myths are identified and new practices evolve, new examples will be posted on the Innovation Hub2 of the Acquisition Gateway to foster dynamic conversations among the acquisition workforce.

Keep reading memo at: https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/SIGNED-Myth-Busting-4-Strenthening-Engagement-with-Industry-Partners-through-Innovative-Business-Practices.pdf

June 4, 2019 By AMK

Can contracts be awarded without pricing?

Since the enactment of the Competition in Contracting Act in 1984, price has been an essential element of every contract awarded by the Federal Government under the Federal Acquisition Regulation, along with technical capability and (more recently) past performance. In addition, before making an award, every contracting officer must determine that the price offered by the winning offeror(s) is “fair and reasonable.”

Agencies have wide discretion in establishing the value of the factors and subfactors under each of these three elements, and frequently price is identified as the least important of the factors to be evaluated.

But what if the price on a solicitation was not a factor to be evaluated at all? As part of the Professional Services Council’s long-standing acquisition reform advocacy agenda, we supported just such an experiment and it is now in effect for some agencies.

In Section 825 of the Fiscal Year 2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), Congress provided that, for multiple-award indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity (ID/IQ) contracts, DoD, NASA and Coast Guard buying activities are not required to evaluate cost or price during the evaluation of the formation of the ID/IQ contract, provided other conditions are met. If cost or price is not evaluated at formation, however, cost or price must be an evaluation factor in conjunction with the issuance of any task or delivery order under such awarded contract. The Professional Services Council strongly supported that legislative proposal.

What all of these ID/IQ solicitations and resulting contracts have in common is that there is actually no work associated with the formation of the base contract. All of the actual work is solicited under task or delivery orders issued once the base contract is in place. As such, we argued that agencies were creating irrelevant price evaluation factors in order to comply with the then-existing statutory requirement to evaluate price at contract formation, and agencies were not making true comparative evaluations of offerors’ pricing since there was no factual basis for doing so. And it didn’t matter whether the ID/IQ contract provided for fixed prices, labor hour pricing, or hybrid pricing.

Keep reading article at: https://www.pscouncil.org/a/Content/2019/Can_Contracts_Be_Awarded_Without_Pricing.aspx

The main instrument of the GOES-R next-generation satellite constellation wasn’t working before launch but officials sent it into space anyway.

Three departments in charge of federal purchasing policy have unveiled an interim rule amending Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) to ban agencies from purchasing telecommunications and video surveillance equipment from five Chinese firms, including Huawei.

The purpose of this memorandum is to improve awareness of vendor engagement strategies that Federal procurement thought leaders are using to create a more responsive buying process, modernize the acquisition culture, and deliver greater value to the taxpayer.

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