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October 12, 2020 By cs

When politics and procurement mix, the effects can be deadly

Important components of the pandemic response have bypassed essential rules and protocols, but the problems go beyond the current crisis.

As the national response to the pandemic and associated economic crisis continues to unfold, it is becoming increasingly clear that we are again in territory where politics meets procurement. And that should be a concern for every American.

Let’s start with the obvious: The effective and efficient execution of any portion of the pandemic response largely hinges on the effective and efficient performance of our acquisition system.

The process by which federal contracts and grants are awarded is critical to support the manufacture and distribution of protective equipment, ventilators, or therapeutics and to deliver assistance to individuals and businesses struggling to survive. It therefore follows that the responsiveness of the acquisition system to meet these critical needs in large part determines the efficiency and effectiveness of our government’s response.

This is why it is so disturbing to read about cases in which important components of the national response have involved clear efforts to simply ignore the rules and protocols, from basic due diligence and pricing analyses to transparency. Yet, that is exactly what we have seen too often in recent months, including actions associated with Project Airbridge; sole source contracts for vital equipment that proved faulty; tens of millions of dollars wasted on a contract for ventilators that the Health and Human Services Department had to terminate; a complete lack of transparency around huge contracts for vaccine distribution; contracts awarded to an 11-day-old company that just happened to be founded by a former administration official; enormous grants made to a company in a manner that has raised serious ethical and other concerns, and more.

Even worse, all of these cases share another common denominator: the actions were directed and sometimes executed by senior political officials who, it could fairly be argued, are not versed in good acquisition practices and who may be driven by incentives other than the mission itself.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.govexec.com/management/2020/09/when-politics-and-procurement-mix-effects-can-be-deadly/168553/

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: acquisition workforce, coronavirus, COVID-19, credibility, due diligence, fairness, HHS, integrity, pandemic, politics, price analysis, program effectiveness, transparency

December 20, 2019 By cs

Mixing politics and procurement creates a toxic brew

If elected officials are allowed to influence government contracting decisions it won’t end well for the public.

Imagine this: You are a mid-career government acquisition professional responsible for making an award decision on a contract worth over $400 million. As you evaluate the bids you also can’t help but see and hear the president of the United States openly advocate for one bidder. You’ve already heard, directly or through channels, that one or more U.S. senators are also pressing for this company to get the award. What are you going to do?

This is the heart of the controversy swirling around the recent award of a border wall contract to a North Dakota company for which the president and at least one senator publicly advocated. Was the award politically influenced? Is the company the best positioned to build this portion of the border wall along the southwest border? Since the company was deemed unqualified on more than one previous occasion, one has to wonder: Has the company taken significant steps forward in its capabilities to the point where it is now best suited to the requirements of the contract?

Of course we don’t know the answers to any of those questions. Neither does the president or the senator. And we may only get answers should another bidder protest the award and the questions are litigated. But that’s not actually the biggest concern this incident raises. The biggest concern is that we even have to have this discussion.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.govexec.com/management/2019/12/mixing-politics-and-procurement-creates-toxic-brew/161729/

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: influence, influence peddling, political influence, politics, proposal evaluation

January 26, 2016 By AMK

Of politics and procurement

How best to say this?  “Here we go again?”  

US CongressOnce more, a group of well-intentioned members of Congress are pushing the president to issue a directive that would mandate that contractors disclose all of their political contributions upon being awarded a government contract.  Transparency, we are told, is essential to the integrity of the procurement process.

Odd as it may sound, they are half right.  The integrity of the process is essential. But in this case, the “transparency” being discussed actually risks opening the door to the very kind of malfeasance the acquisition system is designed to avoid. It is a poorly conceived proposal that should be set aside — for good.

So, what is the big deal?  There are several reasons to strongly oppose the proposal.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.govexec.com/excellence/promising-practices/2016/01/politics-and-procurement/125053/

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: campaign contributions, Congress, disclosure, ethics, influence, political contributions, politics, transparency

August 9, 2013 By AMK

The drone that wouldn’t die: How a Defense contractor bested the Pentagon

With large budget cuts looming in the next decade, top Air Force officials knew last year they needed to halt spending on some large and expensive programs. So they looked for a candidate that was underperforming, had busted its budget, and wasn’t vital to immediate combat needs.

They soon settled on the production line for a $223 million aircraft with the wingspan of a tanker but no pilot in the cockpit, built to fly for a little over a day over vast terrain while sending imagery and other data back to military commanders on the ground. Given the ambitious name “Global Hawk,” the aircraft had cost far more than expected, and was plagued by recurrent operating flaws and maintenance troubles.

“The Block 30 [version of Global Hawk] is not operationally effective,” the Pentagon’s top testing official had declared in a blunt May 2011 report about the drones being assembled by Northrop Grumman in Palmdale, Calif.

Canceling the purchase of new Global Hawks and putting recently-built planes in long-term storage would save $2.5 billion over five years, the service projected. And the drone’s military missions could be picked up by an Air Force stalwart, the U-2 spy plane, which had room for more sensors and could fly higher.

But what happened next was an object lesson in the power of a defense contractor to trump the Pentagon’s own attempts to set the nation’s military spending priorities amid a tough fiscal climate.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/07/the-drone-that-wouldnt-die-how-a-defense-contractor-bested-the-pentagon/277807/ 

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: budget cuts, campaign contributions, concurrent acquisition, DoD, lobbying, political contributions, political influence, politics, product development

April 5, 2012 By AMK

GSA chief’s resignation evokes sympathy, hope for reform

Federal contracting experts had mixed statements of support for former General Services Administrator Martha Johnson, who resigned April 2, with calls for urgent reform in the agency she led.

Johnson stepped down along with two senior assistants following release of an inspector general’s report detailing close to $1 million in lavish spending by GSA employees at the 2010 Western Regions Conference in Las Vegas, including contractor rule breaking.

“This is a real shame,” said Warren Suss, president of federal consultancy Suss Consulting.

“I think it’s more of a shame because of the loss [Johnson] means to the agency. In the current budgetary environment and in the current political environment, this is a time when the government needs an agency like GSA, an agency that can deliver efficiency in acquisition and can step up to its role as a central buying organization and demonstrate its value to the rest of the government.”

“My guess is this will lead to some significant reorganization and maybe to improved operational efficiency in the agency down the road. But in the near term it’s definitely a black eye for GSA,” Suss said.

Bob Guerra, partner at Guerra Kiviat Inc., said: “It’s an absurdity that the administrator of the GSA should resign over something that happened a few weeks – maybe a couple of months – after she got into her position.

“Martha has done incredible things at GSA,” he said. “The biggest issue at GSA was not whether or not they had a conference of some sort; the biggest issue at GSA was the morale, and that’s where she was concentrating. As a management executive, she was working on stabilizing the workforce, improving morale – important things that any executive does.”

“I don’t think she just upped and quit. I think what happened was she told, you’re ‘upping and quiting,’” Guerra added.

But Guy Timberlake, CEO of The American Small Business Coalitions, said he thought Johnson resigned “because it was the right thing to do.”

“I’m now looking at the trickle-down effect and how it may influence contracts for the rest of the year,” he said.

Timberlake said he is concerned about the impact this incident will have on the GSA and whether the agency will be able to fulfill its acquisition requirements for the rest of the fiscal year.

Among other items, the IG report found GSA failed to follow contracting regulations in many of the procurements associated with conferences. Other failures included disclosing a competitor’s proposal price to a favored contractor and awarding a $58,000 contract to a large business in violation of small-business set-asides.

“I’m less troubled about the ‘whys’ having to do with the procurements than I am about the ‘hows’,” said Stan Soloway, CEO and president of the Professional Services Council.

Soloway said he worries about a hair-trigger decision toward new policy changes based on “one bad job procurement.”

He said he hoped there would not be a big rush to change laws or policy.

Industry expert Mark Amtower agreed. “This is a case in point for training,” he said, adding that Johnson was an unnecessary casualty.

“I listen to rumblings of warts all the time. She didn’t have any,” he said. “She was well-respected among her employees and the industry and that’s hard to accomplish.”

Although there may be some contract policy tweaking, its effect on GSA contracting should be minimal because “this is mostly a PBS [Public Buildings Service] issue — I don’t see it becoming an FAS issue,” Amtower said.

About the Authors: David Hubler is senior editor of Washington Technology, and Alysha Sideman is the online content producer for Washington Technology.   This article appeared Apr. 3, 2012 at http://washingtontechnology.com/articles/2012/04/03/gsa-scandal-react.aspx?s=wtdaily_040412.

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: acquisition workforce, efficiency, GSA, IG, PBS, politics, procurement integrity, procurement reform

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