PPIRS | The Contracting Education Academy

February 21, 2019 By AMK

Agencies may evaluate contractor responsibility under FSS orders

Contractor responsibility is to be considered before every federal contract award, but what about task orders issued under an Federal Supply Schedule (FSS) contract? Are contractors still subject to responsibility inquiries when competing for orders?

According to GAO, the answer is, “yes.”

Dehler Manufacturing Company, Inc., B-416819 et al. (Comp. Gen. Dec. 19, 2018), involved a procurement by the Army to provide furnishings for barracks at Fort Jackson in South Carolina. The Solicitation, which contemplated the award of a task order, required prospective contractors to hold FSS contacts that included furnishings. Award was to be made on a low-price technically-acceptable basis. Proposals were to be evaluated on a number of factors, including past performance.

Dehler timely submitted a response to the solicitation. During the Army’s evaluation of past performance, it obtained information from the Past Performance Information Retrieval System (PPIRS). Of the five PPIRS reports the Army obtained for Dehler, four categorized Dehler’s performance as either “Marginal” or “Unsatisfactory.” Consequently, the Army concluded Dehler’s past performance was unacceptable and eliminated it from consideration.

Keep reading this article at: http://smallgovcon.com/gaobidprotests/agencies-may-evaluate-contractor-responsibility-under-fss-orders-says-gao/

April 26, 2017 By AMK

Changes coming to SAM.gov

The General Services Administration (GSA) is planning to test a new version of the System for Award Management (SAM.gov).

This means that plans GSA made as far back as 2001 may be realized sometime in 2018.

At present, SAM.gov is the federal database where vendors register to do business with the government. When it went live in mid-2012, SAM was introduced as portal where, over time, several different government databases would be consolidated. Federal Agency Registration (FedReg), the Online Representations and Certifications Application (ORCA), and the Excluded Parties List System (EPLS) were among the systems to be first consolidated under the SAM umbrella.

The 2012 introduction of SAM initially was delayed and, once launched, many problems were encountered by vendors and government agencies alike. Since then, SAM experienced a data breach in 2013, cost overruns, accessibility issues, and periodic interface difficulties with SBA’s small business database.

GSA now plans to resume work on the original vision for SAM: the consolidation of as many as 10 websites.

A new test site, at beta.sam.gov, reportedly is to launch between July 1 and Sept. 30, 2017.

The objective of the consolidated web site is to reduce the federal contracting burden on contractors and government officials alike by creating a single place to access a range of data, including contractor registration information, contract award data on prime contractors and subcontractors, and information about companies excluded from pursuing government work.

Eventually, the functions of 10 existing sites — including SAM.gov, the Federal Procurement Data System (fpds.gov); Federal Business Opportunities (fbo.gov), the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act Subaward Reporting System (fsrs.gov), and the Federal Awardee Performance and Integrity Information System (fapiis.gov) — will become a part of the SAM beta site. Once testing is completed, all of the added functionality will become a part of a new SAM.gov site. The sites that are merged into SAM.gov then will be retired.

Improvements, such as search features, will continue to be made to existing sites as the new site is being tested, GSA says.

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

January 31, 2014 By AMK

DoD re-emphasizes importance of contractor past-performance reporting

The Defense Department’s contracting chief, Frank Kendall, has called for renewed emphasis on the importance of agency reporting on contractor performance.

In a January 9, 2014 memorandum to the Department of Defense (DoD) acquisition workforce, DoD Undersecretary for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics points out that while the reporting goal for FY14 is 95 percent, compliance with the goal is at only 81.5 percent department-wide.

Only first quarter FY14 data are available at this point. Past performance reports are to be filed in Past Performance Information Retrieval System (PPIRS).

An analysis of first quarter FY14 data shows that while five units within DoD have a reporting record of 90 percent or better, there are eight DoD units with 50 percent or lower reporting compliance. Most of these are small units with a small amount of contracting activity.

A DoD unit with a significant number of contract closeouts coupled with a high rate of reporting non-compliance is the Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA). DCMA’s reporting percentage is 68.5 percent.

The Navy, Army and Air Force have the highest numbers of contracts and contract closeouts. While their levels of reporting are relatively high (85, 78, and 87 percent, respectively), each has a high number of overdue reports as of the end of the first quarter. The Army has 8,810 past due reports, while the Navy and Air Force have 3,023 and 1,737 late reports, respectively.

The memorandum and its attachment can be seen here: USA000068-14-DPAP.

Contractor responsibility is to be considered before every federal contract award, but what about task orders issued under an Federal Supply Schedule (FSS) contract? Are contractors still subject to responsibility inquiries when competing for orders?

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