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USPS didn’t justify $210M in noncompetitive purchases, IG says

The Postal Service likely didn’t justify $210 million in noncompetitive  purchases made over two fiscal years, which puts USPS at risk for not obtaining  the best price when awarding contracts, a Sept. 25 USPS inspector general report  says.

Contracting officials at the USPS did not document a finding of price or cost  reasonableness or write up a necessary justification in 21 of 56  statistically-sampled noncompetitive contract awards worth $37 million that the  inspector general audited.  Based  on those findings, auditors project that at least $210 million worth of Postal  Service purchases in fiscals 2011 and 2012 likewise lacked documentation to show  that the noncompetitive award was necessary and not unnecessarily expensive. The  mail deliverer spent $1.3 billion on contracts those two fiscal years.

Agencies must conduct a price or cost analysis to support that noncompetitive  contract prices were fair and reasonable.  And there must be documentation that  that process took place.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.fiercegovernment.com/story/usps-didnt-justify-nearly-40-million-noncompetitive-purchases-ig-says/2013-09-26

 

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Procurement sleight-of-hand gave contractors access to Naval bases

The Navy Installations Command reached outside normal competitive channels to procure a flawed and risky commercial access control system that has allowed 65,000 contractors to routinely access its bases. The procurement process involved purchases on government credit cards 51 cents below the $2,500 maximum allowed, the Defense Department Inspector General said in a report released this week.

The Installations Command used a contract for a Navywide perimeter monitoring system run by the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Panama City, Fla., as the umbrella contract for the Navy commercial access control system, or NCACS, in 49 states and the Mariana Islands.  The command also tapped a contract for sensor systems run by the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Port Hueneme, Calif., to buy $9.9 million worth of handheld barcode scanners to check IDs at bases as part of the NCACS project, the IG reported.

The report also made it clear that the Installations Command outsourced base credentialing and background checks to a private contractor in order to save money.

In July 2010, the Installation Command selected the Rapidgate system developed by Eid Passport of Hillsboro, Ore., to vet contractor employees who needed routine base access for up to a year in place of the more secure Defense Department common access card issued to Aaron Alexis, an employee of a Hewlett-Packard Corp. subcontractor who killed 12 people at the Washington Navy Yard Monday.

The Rapidgate system consists of a registration station that takes a photo of the contractor and scans fingerprints, and a Web interface for submission of personnel information.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.nextgov.com/defense/2013/09/procurement-sleight-hand-gave-contractors-access-naval-bases/70496/?oref=nextgov_today_nl

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DoD contractors lobby Congress against competition

As the Army prepares to choose the new builder of its handheld digital radios, the incumbent contractors are tryiing to convince Congress to keep other companies out. The incumbents are General Dynamics, which publicly apologized to the Army over its half of the program last year, and Rockwell Collins. The Army’s own chief of acquisitions, Lt. Gen. William Phillips, told the Senate Armed Services Committee just yesterday that “the industry partners that were not a part of the program of record” — i.e.  the troubled JTRS (Joint Tactical Radio System) program, which had contracted Rockwell and GD — provided “radios that were cheaper, better capability and met almost all of our requirements in most cases”. The service, he said, was committed to “full and open competition.”

We saw a similar play already last year, albeit slightly later in the legislative process, when Reps. Dave Loesback and Trent Frank offered an amendment – later withdrawn – that would have required competitors to meet stringent conditions that effectively ruled out radio-builder Harris and other outsiders, thereby protecting General Dynamics. This time it is co-incumbent Rockwell Collins, which splits the current contract with GD, that’s leading the charge.

Keep reading this article at: http://breakingdefense.com/2013/05/09/army-radios-contractors-lobby-congress-against-competition

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Focus of IG investigation now oversees GSA’s IT supply schedule program

An ongoing investigation by the Office of Personnel Management’s inspector general into contract steering and wasteful spending raises questions about a former OPM official who left the agency in September 2011 to oversee the General Services Administration’s biggest federal supply schedules program.

The probe found that top OPM officials steered consulting work to prominent human resources expert Stewart Liff, raising broader concerns about the overall procurement practices inside the agency’s human resources services division, according to an interim report by OPM Inspector General Patrick McFarland.

Investigators found that Liff was hired in 2010 and 2011 without competitive bidding through a “pass-through company,” with three task orders paid out on the contract totaling about $450,000.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.federaltimes.com/article/20130416/ACQUISITION01/304160003/Focus-IG-investigation-now-oversees-GSA-8217-s-supply-schedule-program?odyssey=nav%7Chead

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DHS reduces noncompetitive contracts, improves oversight

Noncompetitive contracts at the Homeland Security Department totaled about  $389 million in fiscal 2012, down from $3.5 billion in fiscal 2008, the DHS office of inspector general says.

The department’s spending on noncompetitive contracts has dropped each year  since fiscal 2008, and in the meantime, it has improved its internal oversight  of acquisitions, the OIG says in a report dated Feb. 1, 2013 and recently posted online.

For example, out of the 40 noncompetitive awards from 2012 that auditors  examined, all those that required written justification had it complete and on  file. Problems with justification have fallen since 2008, when 27 percent of  justifications in the OIG’s sample were deficient.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.fiercegovernment.com/story/dhs-reduces-noncompetitive-contracts-improves-oversight/2013-02-20 

Download a copy of the DHA IG’s report referred to in this article at: http://www.oig.dhs.gov/assets/Mgmt/2013/OIG_13-36_Feb13.pdf 

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