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Pentagon will relaunch $475 million cyber effort this fall

Shortly after cancelling its search for bids on a five-year outsourcing contract, U.S. Cyber Command said a retooled version will be out by October.

US Cyber CommandAfter abandoning last week a $475 million job posting for cyberattack and network defense experts, the Pentagon now says a retooled solicitation that takes into account private sector questions will be out by Oct. 1.

“Given significant interest along with technical and clarification questions from industry, U.S. Cyber Command is reassessing and amending the [request for proposals] to give industry better fidelity into cyber requirements,” a Cyber Command official told Nextgov on May 28th.

The original solicitation, released April 30, was itself a revised version of a December 2014 draft request for proposals. The draft and final contracts both strove to reconcile the command’s needs with cyber market realities.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2015/05/pentagon-will-relaunch-475-million-cyber-effort-fall/11406:

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Report: How unaccountable contracting fails governments and taxpayers

Contracting-out government services is a topic that stays in the news.

Units of local, state and the federal government usually are prompted to consider a contracting-out strategy as a means to save money.  It’s not unusual for such plans to be challenged by government workers, labor unions, and even taxpayers who think that good paying jobs will be eliminated and savings really won’t be realized.

But what about when a service is outsourced to the private sector.  Is it given the oversight and analysis that its should be afforded?  More directly, how carefully are contractors being watched?

Now, a non-profit organization devoted to the study of privatization and responsible contracting called In the Public Interest, has published a comprehensive report entitled, “Standing Guard: How Unaccountable Contracting Fails Governments and Taxpayers.”

The report makes the point that when local and state governments contract-out critical public services that are crucial to the well-being of the community, the need for robust contract oversight is pressing. However, research and the experiences of cities and states across the county show that too often contract oversight is lax.

Oversight is important so that government can hold contractors accountable for their performance, and ensure that the public receives quality services at a reasonable cost. Proper oversight can protect public health and safety. Strong oversight allows governments to catch waste, fraud, and abuse in real time instead of long after the fact, and correct mistakes before they result in serious harm.

To download and read the complete report, click here: http://www.inthepublicinterest.org/sites/default/files/Standing%20Guard.pdf 

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Senate testimony: Intelligence community needs to keep better tabs on its contractors

The 17 agencies in the intelligence community must get a better handle on the extent of their reliance on contractors, witnesses told a Senate panel on Wednesday. Overuse of outsourcing presents risks to both national security and managerial efficiency, senators and an auditor warned.

“Contractors can provide flexibility and unique expertise, but there are risks” if internal controls, formal planning and documentation are inadequate, Timothy DiNapoli, director of acquisition and sourcing management at the Government Accountability Office (GAO), told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. “Changes to the definition of core contract personnel limit the comparability of the information over time,” he said, noting that the civilian intelligence community agencies used various methods to calculate the number of contract personnel and did not maintain documentation to validate the number of personnel reported for 37 percent of records reviewed. GAO also found that the civilian intelligence community agencies either under- or over-reported contract obligations by more than 10 percent for one-fifth of the records.

Panel Chairman Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., said, “The people we entrust with leadership roles at these agencies need to be able to show the American people, and Congress, that they know who is working for them and why.” Overreliance on contractors behind the intelligence agencies’ secrecy walls presents three hazards, Carper said: hollowing out the in-house workforce and making it weaker, requiring extra layers of management and paying more for work that could have been performed by federal employees.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.defenseone.com/management/2014/06/intelligence-community-needs-keep-better-tabs-its-contractors/86758/

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The federal outsourcing boom and why it’s failing Americans

Two of the biggest news events of the past year have been the leaks about top-secret snooping by the NSA and the disastrous rollout of Obamacare. But in an important way, they are both manifestations of a story that has been unfolding for decades — that of a federal government that has outsourced too much of what it does to private contractors while allowing the quality of its own workforce to atrophy.

Lots of Americans were disturbed to learn from Edward Snowden that the government is keeping track of their every phone call and text message. But they might have also wondered why a 30-year-old government contractor in Honolulu, with security clearance that was approved by another private contractor, had routine access to some of the government’s most sensitive secrets. Even worse, two years after Pfc. Bradley Manning did the same thing, Snowden managed to download millions of pages of documents from a computer system designed and managed by private contractors without setting off a single alarm. The whole affair was an embarrassment to Washington’s government contracting sector.

So, too, the fiasco with HealthCare.gov, which despite the bleating of Republicans has almost nothing to do with the wisdom of the new health-care law and everything to do with the way the government and its outside contractors set about implementing it. While several of the contractors failed to perform as promised, in hindsight it appears the government also made a crucial mistake in deciding to rely on the IT staff at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to manage the contractors and oversee the final integration of the new system. Free-market ideologues will reflexively see in this failure further evidence of the inherent inferiority of public-sector workers. In truth, it is evidence of how outdated civil service rules and ill-conceived caps on the size and pay of the federal workforce have eroded the government’s ability to perform even essential government tasks.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-federal-outsourcing-boom-and-why-its-failing-americans/2014/01/31/21d03c40-8914-11e3-833c-33098f9e5267_story.html

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US has concerns with UK plan to outsource acquisition oversight

The US Defense Department is expressing concern over a UK initiative to consider outsourcing management of its defense procurement and support operations, roles traditionally filled by government employees.

Britain  plans to select a contractor to fulfill acquisition oversight duties by mid-2014 and is poised to begin a 12-month assessment of the government-owned, contractor-operated (GOCO) framework. The plan is part of broader overhaul of the UK Defence Equipment & Support operation (DE&S).

“We do have some concerns over an option that would put contractors in roles normally filled by government employees and the effects this would have on ongoing and future cooperation,” said US Lt. Col. Melinda Morgan, a spokeswoman for Frank Kendall, DoD’s top acquisition official.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.defensenews.com/article/20130429/DEFREG01/304290015/US-Has-Concerns-UK-Plan-Outsource-Acquisition-Oversight

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