Monthly Archives: March, 2009

The General Services Administration will finally re-award it’s multibillion dollar Alliant information technology contract tomorrow, the agency said. The announcement comes about one year after a federal court upheld a protest against a previous set of awards GSA made, forcing the agency to re-evaluate the procurement meant to become the government’s premier IT contract. Following the protest decision, Federal Times uncovered an apparent conflict of interest regarding the contractor GSA hired to collect performance information from the bidders. The GSA IG found other irregularities with GSA’s evaluation process. One has to wonder whether this round of awards will spark new rounds…

You’ll recall from this story yesterday that the Postal Service is in danger of running out of cash this year, barring new legislation from Congress. John Potter, the postmaster general, said he intends to keep paying salaries and operational expenses — but the Postal Service might have to forego its annual contribution to the retiree health benefit trust fund. What happens then? There won’t be an impact on retirees, because the trust fund covers future retiree benefits. The Postal Service currently spends about $2 billion annually to cover current retirees. The more interesting question is what Congress or the Treasury…

There is widespread fraud in the Small Business Administration’s Historically Underutilized Business Zone (HUBZone) Program, the Government Accountability Office has found. In a review of 36 contracts awarded in four cities, GAO found that 19 firms claiming to be HUBZone eligible didn’t meet the qualifications for the program that is meant to benefit small businesses in severely economically depressed areas. The firms didn’t have their principal offices in HUBZones or didn’t meet the requirement mandating a certain percentage of employees live in the HUBZone. The result: the firms fraudulently obtained more than $30 million in HUBZone contracts in fiscal 2006…

Jon Cannon, President Barack Obama’s nominee for deputy administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, withdrew his name from consideration Wednesday afternoon. And in case you’re wondering, it’s not over unpaid taxes, an issue which has befallen a handful of Obama’s other nominees. Cannon, an environmental law professor at the University of Virginia, said he withdrew because he once served on the board of a nonprofit group currently under investigation. It has come to my attention that America’s Clean Water Foundation, where I once served on the board of directors, has become the subject of scrutiny. While my service on the…

The Government Accountability Office issued a blunt assessment of the Defense Department’s grip on its acquisition workforce needs today. Its opening line: DoD lacks critical departmentwide information to ensure its acquisition workforce is sufficient to meet its national security mission. And its second line: In its acquisition workforce assessments, DoD does not collect or track information on contractor personnel, despite their being a key segment of the total acquisition workforce. Followed closely by: DoD also lacks information on why contractor personnel are used, which limits its ability to determine whether decisions to use contractors to augment the in-house acquisition workforce…

The United States Military Academy will outsource more than 300 public works jobs to the private sector, the university announced today. Ginn Group, a Peachtree City, Ga. company, was selected to provide public works and maintenance services to the Army’s West Point, N.Y. campus. The decision is tentative and will be subject to a 20-day review period during which losing bidders can protest to the Government Accountability Office. The estimated cost savings will be released following that 20-day period, a USMA spokesman said.

One other thought from today’s postal hearing. There was a lot of outrage over John Potter’s compensation package. It’s worth about $850,000, though that includes contributions to his retirement plan and his $66,000 security detail — he’s only taking home about half that amount. Still, Potter earned a $130,000 bonus last year, even though the Postal Service posted a $3 billion loss. Potter said it was because the Postal Service met other goals, like customer satisfaction and workplace safety. But the bonus prompted some congressional criticism: Rep. Stephen Lynch: Just because we’re rewarding executives at AIG… for running their companies…

I’ve got a story up on the Web site about today’s marathon Postal Service hearing. It wasn’t very encouraging: As things stand now, the Postal Service faces a $6 billion deficit, and it will run out of money by year’s end. There are some short-term fixes, like switching to 5-day delivery, or changing the way the Postal Service pays retiree health benefits. They’re detailed in my story. And they’re enough to “plug the gaps,” so to speak, and get the Postal Service through the recession. John Potter, the postmaster general, says he’s confident mail volume will pick up once the…

NYU professor Paul Light has a good op-ed in today’s New York Times on the interminable Senate confirmation process and how that leads to the growth of unconfirmed “czar” positions: The Senate has done virtually nothing, for example, to address the glacial pace of confirmations that often leads presidents to expand the White House staff as well as the number of appointees who serve without Senate approval. Although he has submitted the names of nominees to the Senate relatively quickly, President Obama will be lucky if the last of his nearly 500 full-time cabinet and subcabinet officers are confirmed by…

Federal Times wants to hear from employees and managers under the National Security Personnel System about how the program should be improved. Do you think it’s working or not? Where are its weaknesses? What can be done to fix those problems, now that the Pentagon and Office of Personnel Management are putting NSPS under the microscope? Or do you think the system is too flawed to repair, and that it’s time to return to the General Schedule? E-mail me at slosey@federaltimes.com if you’d like to talk. If you’d prefer that your name not be published, that would be fine.