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In NASA’s contracting office, skip the buzzwords, please

NASA might be one of the most buzzworthy agencies but don’t expect any love from the procurement office if you come in throwing around buzzwords.

NASANASA prefers to focus on the requirements its mission owners need to fulfill their endeavors – like launching humans into space – and less on secondary ramifications like cost savings. That includes cloud computing, said Bill McNally, assistant administrator of NASA’s Office of Procurement, at least when it’s not intrinsically tied to mission requirements.

Just because the federal government is set to spend some $7.3 billion on cloud in fiscal 2016 does not itself merit buying it.

“If you walk into my office wanting to talk about cloud, you’re going to get kicked out my office,” McNally said. “The problem with government is, we’re spending too much time trying to understand cost savings rather than focusing on requirements.”

Keep reading this article at: http://www.nextgov.com/cloud-computing/2016/06/nasas-contracting-office-skip-buzzwords-please/129315

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Adjusting government buying habits

The White House and General Services Administration’s category management initiative isn’t just the province of procurement offices and the contracting corps. It will have real impact in program offices as well.

ombEven more so as the practice evolves from its current focus on common purchases to those that are unique and critical to the missions of a few or just one agency.

Managing spending by category won’t just change how common goods and services are bought, it will affect why they’re bought. Both ingredients of the “why,” requirements and demand, are generated by programs and need to be aggregated in ways that make sense for effective and efficient acquisition to achieve the desired outcomes of the agency.

The Office of Management and Budget and its Office of Federal Procurement Policy are creating an infrastructure that will affect every agency and everyone involved in acquisition one way or the other.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.govexec.com/excellence/promising-practices/2015/12/adjusting-governments-buying-habits/124228

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Protests delay implementation of NASA’s SEWP contracts

Four companies have filed bid protests to be included in NASA’s slate of IT solution contracts under the SEWP V program.

The space agency announced 97 contracts in four groups earlier this month, scheduled to go into effect on Nov. 1. With the four protests logged with the Government Accountability Office, implementation of those contract awards has been delayed.

Four companies – UNICOM Government Inc., BahFed Corp., NCS Technologies Inc. and KPaul Properties LLC – submitted protests on Oct. 20. All four protests are under review by the GAO, which must issue decisions by Jan. 28.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.federaltimes.com/article/20141024/IT/310240010/Protests-delay-implementation-SEWP-V-contracts

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NASA awards flurry of contracts under SEWP

NASA has a host of new vendors to buy IT services from, after awarding 56 contracts to more than 40 companies under the latest version of its Solutions for Enterprise-Wide Procurement, known as SEWP.

Announced Oct. 1, SEWP V is the fifth generation of the multiaward governmentwide acquisition contract. This particular iteration has a total value of up to $10 billion over the next decade.

NASA staggered its SEWP V vendor and contract announcements. The Oct. 1 announcement covered two subcategories: Group A, for computer-based systems, and Group B, for networking, security, video and conference tools.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.nextgov.com/cio-briefing/2014/10/nasa-awards-flurry-contracts-under-sewp-v/95705/

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Agencies setting off into the next data frontier — procurement

Agencies are starting to grasp the real value of procurement data. Several agencies are asking the General Services Administration, NASA and others for more details on what they buy, how they buy it and how they could make better decisions.

NASA, for example, is working closely with the Veterans Affairs Department to provide them with an assortment of data points around energy efficiency, such as how VA’s IT products are rated for Energy Star or E-Peat. NASA also plans to provide VA with information about how their purchases meet the Trade Agreements Act and about their buying habits based on product classifications.

Joanne Woytek, the program manager for NASA SEWP governmentwide acquisition contract, said the fact that VA and other agencies are asking for and receiving this type of data is a sign of maturity for both the GWAC providers and the agencies in understanding what’s available and why the data matters.

“I’ve seen this happening more with our contracts and SEWP V. A lot of what we are putting into that is to make it a more mature model. We can’t just say, ‘we can do that,’ we will actually demonstrate the things we can do,” she said at the 2014 Acquisition Excellence conference in Washington Thursday sponsored by GSA, the Homeland Security Department and ACT-IAC. “We will be able to show agencies what they are buying. We’re going to be able to provide them with more information. We always said we could do that, but we actually are going to start doing that. I think that’s going to have a bigger effect on agencies who no longer will say ‘I don’t want to use you because I’m not sure you can give me that information. I’m not sure you can control what we’re purchasing.’ We can do that for them and we’ll actually start showing that. So I see us having a better impact on people now that we’ve gotten to this point.”

Keep reading this article at: http://www.federalnewsradio.com/?nid=533&sid=3587330&pid=0&page=1 

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