Performance Evaluation | The Contracting Education Academy

March 14, 2014 By AMK

GSA acquisition database integration pushed back to 2018

The General Services Administration (GSA) pushed back the planned completion date of an integrated acquisition database to 2018 because of development problems and cost overruns, GSA Assistant Commissioner Kevin Youel Page told a Senate panel March 6.

“We’ve suffered our own missteps,” Page said during a hearing of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee subcommittee on financial and contracting oversight.

Plans were made in 2001 to combine governmentwide acquisition databases into a single system called the Integrated Acquisition Environment.

But the project has been plagued with problems.

A March 2012 Government Accountability Office report says cost overruns, which grew by 89 percent, were largely due to mistakes GSA has made. GAO initially estimated it would cost about $95.7 million, but the 2012 estimate came in at $181.1 million.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.fiercegovernment.com/story/gsa-acquisition-database-integration-pushed-back-2018/2014-03-07

March 13, 2014 By AMK

Data on contractor past performance is missing or inaccurate

Four interagency databases designed to warn contracting officers about a company’s past performance are riddled with problems that can become expensive agency boondoggles, a senator declared at an oversight hearing Thursday.

Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., blasted as “shockingly old and clunky” the databases pioneered by the Navy and now administered governmentwide by the General Services Administration, calling for more complete information on whether contractors, for example, have been suspended and debarred.

She criticized the Office of Management and Budget for not sending a witness to a hearing she held as chairwoman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs contracting subcommittee. McCaskill also said the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services “could have avoided a black eye” for the “very public failure” of the rollout of the Healthcare.gov website last fall had it been able to discover more on the past performance of the contractor CGI Federal.

Since passage of the 2002 E-Government Act, agencies have sought to consolidate and centralize online data on contractors’ performance history including contract terminations, criminal acts and administrative adjudications. The chief databases that managers may consult include the Past Performance Information Retrieval System (PPIRS), the Federal Awardee Performance Integrity Information System (FAPIIS) and the System for Award Management.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.govexec.com/contracting/2014/03/senator-some-data-contractor-past-performance-missing-or-inaccurate/80062

September 24, 2013 By AMK

Trillion dollar government acquisition called ‘national scandal’

Days after the U.S. Defense Department signaled an improving relationship with Lockheed Martin Corp. over the cost of the F-35 fighter jet, Sen. John McCain called the program “one of the great national scandals.”

McCain, a Republican from Arizona and the 2008 Republican presidential candidate, was speaking during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing to consider the nominations of several White House appointments, including Deborah Lee James to become the next secretary of the Air Force.

McCain criticized the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter as the government’s first trillion-dollar acquisition program (including sustainment costs). Its repeated cost overruns “have made it worse than a disgrace,” he said. Despite recent efforts to reduce prices on the next batch of aircraft, “it’s still one of the great, national scandals that we have ever had, as far as the expenditure of taxpayers’ dollars are concerned,” he said.

McCain, who also noted that the Navy’s new USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier is more than $2 billion over budget, was responding to James’ comment that the current budget environment is “chaotic” and makes planning difficult.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.dodbuzz.com/2013/09/19/mccain-f-35-among-the-great-national-scandals/

August 5, 2013 By AMK

Pentagon buys untested mobile security system for 300,000 users

Pentagon officials did not test product performance before purchasing a potentially $16 million service intended to secure smartphones and tablets for 300,000 military personnel worldwide.

In late June, the Defense Information Systems Agency inked a deal for software and training to support government-owned mobile gadgets used by the entire Defense Department, along with members of the Coast Guard, National Guard and military reserve forces. The product selection process did not require technology demonstrations, according to contract filings.

The “mobile device management” system is critical to ensuring unclassified consumer brand devices that touch military networks do not infect Defense systems or leak information if they fall into the wrong hands.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.nextgov.com/mobile/2013/07/pentagon-buys-untested-mobile-security-system-300000-users/66854/?oref=nextgov_today_nl

March 25, 2013 By AMK

OFPP tells agencies to get serious about tracking contractor performance

The Office of Federal Procurement Policy is attempting, for a third time, to get agencies to use the Past Performance Information Retrieval System (PPIRS) more consistently.

So instead of asking and encouraging, OFPP Administrator Joe Jordan is setting specific goals for agencies.

In a new memo to chief acquisition officers and senior procurement executives, Jordan sets three-year targets for agencies to enter vendor-performance information into the governmentwide database.

This year, the goals vary depending on how often the agency is currently entering data into PPIRS. For instance, departments inputting data for 60 percent or more of their contracts, must improve to 85 percent by Sept. 30. For agencies using PPIRS 30 percent to 60 percent of the time, their goal now is 75 percent. And for those agencies using PPIRS less than 30 percent of the time, their goal is 65 percent.

“This required contract-administration duty can significantly reduce the risk to the government on future awards, so agencies must take bold steps to ensure that all critical performance information is made available in the Past Performance Information Retrieval System (PPIRS) in a timely manner, and to the maximum extent practicable, eliminate duplicative, paper-based past performance evaluation surveys generated outside these systems,” Jordan wrote.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.federalnewsradio.com/517/3247234/OFPP-tells-agencies-to-get-serious-about-tracking-contractor-performance

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