Navy | The Contracting Education Academy

July 3, 2013 By AMK

Agencies need governmentwide guidance on suspension and debarment process, GAO official says

Though the suspension and debarment system has been around for many years, there is little guidance for it, Government Accountability Office Acting Director of Acquisition and Sourcing Management John Neumann said at a June 12 House Government and Oversight Committee hearing.

“You won’t find anywhere in the U.S. code other than a note in the financial chapter,” Neumann said. “That’s part of the problem. We created a system, but did not supply guidance on how it should operate.”

The Interagency Suspension and Debarment Committee, established in 1986, monitors and coordinates the governmentwide system of suspension and debarment, but agencies aren’t required to work with the ISDC, Neumann noted.

ISDC relies on voluntary agency participation in its informal coordination process, which works well when used, he said. However, Neumann found that not all agencies coordinated through ISDC, and agencies without active suspension and debarment programs generally were not represented at monthly coordination meetings.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.fiercegovernment.com/story/agencies-need-governmentwide-guidance-suspense-and-debarment-process-gao-of/2013-06-13?utm_medium=nl&utm_source=internal

April 24, 2013 By AMK

Federal acquisition executives grapple with retirement wave

As the government’s largest buyer, the Defense Department is building up expertise in its acquisition workforce, with perhaps with greater success than some other agencies in this era of contract austerity, the exception likely coming at the most senior executive level.

So said Shay Assad, director of defense pricing, defense procurement and acquisition policy, on Wednesday (Apr. 17, 2013) speaking before an Arlington, Va., audience of contractors in the Coalition for Government Procurement. His own section of the Pentagon, despite the pay freeze and likely furloughs, he said, “has done remarkably well” in retaining talent, with employees who’ve moved on “only in the single digits, mostly because either they decided we weren’t right for them or they weren’t right for us.”

Keep reading this article at: http://www.govexec.com/contracting/2013/04/federal-acquisition-executives-grapple-retirement-wave/62606/?oref=river

April 19, 2013 By AMK

Navy shapes UCLASS acquisition strategy

Upcoming shore-based and carrier tests will help the Navy determine its acquisition strategy for the Unmanned Carrier Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike System (UCLASS), a large, carrier-based, next-generation drone with a 62-foot wingspan and high-tech sensors engineered to gather and send back images and data, service officials said.

“The UCLASS will be the first deployed carrier based unmanned air vehicle with persistent ISR and a strike capability,” said Navy spokeswoman Jamie Cosgrove.

There are two related and interwoven trajectories with this UAS technology; the Navy is currently testing an early “demonstrator” model of the aircraft while simultaneously preparing to conduct a full and open competition have the UCLASS ready to fly by 2018 to 2020, service officials explained.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.dodbuzz.com/2013/04/16/navy-shapes-x-47b-acquisition-strategy/

April 11, 2013 By AMK

Top officers: F-35 essential, but procurement ‘constipated’

The top officers in the Navy and Marine Corps defended their most expensive program, Lockheed Martin’s troubled F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, while acknowledging the way the Pentagon buys such weapons is not merely broken but “constipated.”

“There’s no alternative for the United States Marine Corps to the F-35B,” Commandant Gen. James Amos said at the opening session of the Navy League’s annual Sea-Air-Space conference. “I want to make that crystal clear to everybody in the audience.” All the great aircraft of the past have gone through teething troubles in development, said Amos, a pilot himself.

“Speaking for the Navy,” added the Chief of Naval Operations, Adm. Jonathan Greenert, “I need the fifth-generation fighter, and that [F-35] provides it, so we’re all in — but it has to perform. It has problems; it is making progress.”

“I do not at this point believe that it is time to look for an exit ramp, if you will, for the Navy for the F-35C,” continued Greenert, who in the past has damned the Joint Strike Fighter with similar faint praise.

Their commitment to the aircraft aside, both men acknowledged – in response to a pointed question from Reagan’s Navy Secretary, John Lehman — that the procurement process which produces systems like the F-35 is a mess. “The process is constipated,” said Gen. Amos. “It’s broke.”

Keep reading this article at: http://defense.aol.com/2013/04/08/gen-amos-adm-greenert-f-35-essential-but-procurement-consti

March 12, 2013 By AMK

Former chiefs: Fix procurement to save the Navy

In a remarkably non-partisan moment amidst the current strife over budget cuts and Chuck Hagel, Ronald Reagan’s Navy Secretary and George W. Bush’s Chief of Naval Operations told a Republican-helmed committee that the Navy’s real problem was not the Obama administration’s budget but decades of creeping bureaucracy that have eaten every budget’s buying power.

“I hate to say anything particularly in praise of this administration’s defense policy,” said John Lehman, Navy Secretary from 1981 to 1987 and national security advisor to Mitt Romney in 2012, at a hearing of the seapower panel of the House Armed Services Committee, chaired by Rep. Randy Forbes. But, Lehman went on, a recent report by the Defense Business Board really shows “how to get at the bureaucracy and the overhead.”
The chairman of that study, retired Marine general Arnold Punaro, told AOL Defense at the time that its recommendation for the Pentagon procurement system was, in a phrase, “put a match to it.”

Keep reading this article at: http://defense.aol.com/2013/02/26/john-lehman-gary-roughead-fix-procurement-to-save-the-navy

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