OMB | The Contracting Education Academy

July 3, 2019 By AMK

Why OMB is ushering us into the second golden age of acquisition

Welcome to the second golden age of federal acquisition reform.

The frustration and the technology are aligning for the Trump administration, the Congress and industry to come together to make the first set of significant, almost seismic changes since the 1990s.

“We are in that rare moment when we have the combination of factors, the customer demand for speed and agility, the congressional receptiveness for acquisition reform legislation, the strong push from OFPP on the importance of innovation such as their creation of acquisition innovation councils, category management memos and the myth busters four memo and strong actions from a number of agencies really propelling acquisition innovation,” said Jeff Koses, the senior procurement executive at the General Services Administration, at the Coalition for Government Procurement’s spring conference in Falls Church, Virginia. “Across GSA we have a number of things that I regard as innovation plays in contracting and policy domain, in the communication domain and in the technology domain.”

To that end, the Office of Federal Procurement Policy sent six legislative proposals to Congress at the end of April to clean up a few things, but more importantly to ask for permission to test and spread innovative acquisition concepts across government.

Keep reading article at: https://federalnewsnetwork.com/reporters-notebook-jason-miller/2019/05/why-omb-is-ushering-us-into-the-second-golden-age-of-acquisition-reform/

June 19, 2019 By AMK

GSA out of compliance on improper payments, watchdog finds

Financial controls designed to minimize agency payments to undeserving parties are not being fully followed by the government’s landlord, the General Services Administration, according to a watchdog report released on Friday.

GSA in fiscal 2018 failed to comply with two of six requirements in the amended Improper Payments Act, said the agency’s inspector general. Specifically, the agency “did not publish an accurate improper payment estimate in its Fiscal Year 2018 Agency Financial Report and … [did not] publish accurate and complete improper payments data in its Fiscal Year 2018 Agency Financial Report,” said the report by the team under IG Carol Fortine Ochoa. “GSA’s risk assessment process is flawed and its procedures for the Do Not Pay initiative contain significant deficiencies and are ineffective.”

Federal law requires agencies with programs susceptible to significant improper payments to estimate and report on them annually to the Office of Management and Budget, in addition to implementing corrective actions. But if a program’s estimated and reported improper payments are below the statutory thresholds for a minimum of two consecutive years, the agency may request relief from the annual reporting requirements.

The IG reviewed GSA’s improper payments in rental of space and purchase cards in fiscal 2017 and 2018, having found $109 million in total improper payments in 2017, and then $16.7 million in 2018 in the rental of space program only. The new report’s review covered August 2018 through February 2019.

Keep reading article at: https://www.govexec.com/management/2019/06/gsa-out-compliance-improper-payments-watchdog-finds/157447

June 18, 2019 By AMK

RPA takes hold in agency procurement

Robotics process automation “is exploding” across government, according to Joanie Newhart, associate administrator of acquisition workforce programs in the Office of Management and Budget’s Office of Federal Procurement Policy.

Cybersecurity experts have a new tool in the fight against hackers – a decoy robot. Researchers at Georgia Tech built the “HoneyBot” to lure hackers into thinking they had taken control of a robot, but instead the robot gathers valuable information about the bad actors, helping businesses better protect themselves from future attacks.

Speaking at the Shared Services Leadership Coalition RPA conference, Newhart said OFPP is monitoring how agencies are using RPA, especially when it comes to procurement. The Department of Health and Human Services is piloting RPA for the closeout phase of acquisitions, and the General Services Administration is using it to smooth out some of its internal processes such as sifting through data to find unpaid invoices. At the Department of Treasury, RPA is facilitating background reviews of contractor performance to help its contracting officers with their due diligence in awarding contracts, she said.

Those kinds of RPA applications could transform federal acquisition in only a few years, as they take over repetitive internal tasks, according to Newhart. OFPP, she said, plans share some of its observations on RPA with agencies soon.

Keep reading article at: https://gcn.com/articles/2019/05/30/rpa-procurement.aspx

June 11, 2019 By AMK

Government improvement challenge to look for many solutions in one

The federal government is offering the private sector the opportunity to influence which projects its upcoming Government Effectiveness Advanced Research Center will address and offering cash prizes to do so.

The GEAR Center Challenge, which stems from a proposal originally in the Trump administration’s government reorganization plan, will take place in three phases: project proposal, project plan submissions and proposal presentations.

The first phase opened for submissions May 2, and each subsequent phase will consist of participants selected from the previous phases. The challenge plans to award up to three prizes of $300,000 each with five additional winners that receive public recognition.

According to government officials who spoke on a May 13 webinar about the challenge, the judges will be looking for proposals that directly map to cross-agency priority goals from the President’s Management Agenda, and plans that address multiple goals at one time are even better.

“Think bolder and look for innovations that will drive advancement into the future,” said Mark Bussow, performance manager at the Office of Management and Budget, adding that the judges wanted to see submissions that would “push the envelope” of how the government can improve.

Keep reading article at: https://www.federaltimes.com/management/2019/05/13/government-improvement-challenge-to-look-for-many-solutions-in-one/

May 23, 2019 By AMK

What OMB’s new ‘shared services’ policy will mean for modernization

The Trump administration wants to make a concerted effort toward establishing a sustainable shared services ecosystem to lower costs and ensure best practices and modern infrastructure pervade government—something past administrations have tried before.

Later today, Office of Management and Budget acting Director Russell Vought will be issuing a memo, “Centralized Mission Support Capabilities for the Federal Government,” which replaces all previous shared services policies. The new policy creates a system for assessing which agency functions—such as payroll or cybersecurity—have consistent standards across government and which specific departments would be best positioned to act as leaders in those areas.

The memo also includes a mandate for the rest of government to follow those agencies and puts a hiatus on new projects once functional areas are identified.

“In the past, agencies took steps to consolidate common mission-support functions internally, and in some cases, to leverage common technology or services offered by other agencies,” Vought wrote in the memo obtained by Nextgov. “The government endeavors to utilize lessons from previous successes and failures to provide a new, enhanced strategic blueprint for sharing quality services within the federal enterprise.”

Keep reading article at: https://www.nextgov.com/policy/2019/04/exclusive-what-ombs-new-shared-services-policy-will-mean-modernization/156562/

Welcome to the second golden age of federal acquisition reform.

Financial controls designed to minimize agency payments to undeserving parties are not being fully followed by the government’s landlord, the General Services Administration, according to a watchdog report released on Friday.

Robotics process automation “is exploding” across government, according to Joanie Newhart, associate administrator of acquisition workforce programs in the Office of Management and Budget’s Office of Federal Procurement Policy.

The federal government is offering the private sector the opportunity to influence which projects its upcoming Government Effectiveness Advanced Research Center will address and offering cash prizes to do so.

The Trump administration wants to make a concerted effort toward establishing a sustainable shared services ecosystem to lower costs and ensure best practices and modern infrastructure pervade government—something past administrations have tried before.

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