The White House announced six more political appointees Tuesday, including three for the Veterans Affairs Department. Roger Baker, nominee for assistant secretary for information and technology, Veterans Affairs. Baker is the former president and chief executive office of Dataline, a technology company in Norfolk, Va. He also is a former chief information officer of the Commerce Department and served on President Barack Obama’s Technology, Media and Telecommunications policy group during his 2008 presidential campaign. William Gunn, nominee for general counsel, VA. He represents military members and veterans in his Northern Virginia law practice. He retired in 2005 from the Air…
Browsing: Defense
More lawmakers are calling on the Defense Department and the Office of Management and Budget to stop public-private competitions for federal work, which are conducted under OMB Circular A-76. House Armed Services Committee chairman Ike Skelton, D-Mo. and Readiness Subcommittee chairman Solomon Ortiz, D-Texas, sent a pair of letters to OMB Director Peter Orszag and Defense Secretary Robert Gates on March 26. The letters urge them to stop using the circular and to conduct a review of competitive sourcing to ensure it’s the right thing for the government. The two House Democrats believe that competitive sourcing has become “a mandate…
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.
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.
Congress and the White House have declared their desire to see an end to public-private competitions for federal jobs through the omnibus bill and other proclamations. But that doesn’t mean the competitions have been stopped completely. Approximately 570 public works and custodial employees at the U.S. Military Academy will learn the fate of their jobs next week when a two-year long public-private competition for their jobs is expected to conclude. Two members of congress are urging the Defense Department to cancel the competition before a decision is announced. In a March 18 letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Reps. John Hall,…
Update, 5:05 p.m.: A quick (and supportive) reaction from John Gage, president of the American Federation of Government Employees: “We have said consistently that this system is inherently flawed. It lacks transparency and fairness. It is a system that is completely untenable and should never have been pursued… I am pleased that [Lynn] has decided to take immediate action.” Original post: The Defense Department announced a major review of the National Security Personnel System today. The announcement came from William Lynn, the deputy secretary of defense. The pay-for-performance system has been controversial for years; President Barack Obama said during the…
The Senate voted 93-4 Wednesday afternoon to confirm William Lynn as deputy defense secretary. During his January confirmation hearing, several senators questioned Lynn’s past as a senior lobbyist for Raytheon Co. of Waltham, Mass., a top Pentagon contractor. President Barack Obama had initially taken a hard line against lobbyists, saying they would have no place in his administration, but later softened his position.
Defense contractor KBR has pleaded guilty on charges it bribed Nigerian government officials to obtain contracts there. The company will pay $579 million in fines, $402 million of which are criminal penalties. According to the Justice Department, which announced the plea deal today, KBR won $6 billion in contracts to build liquefied natural gas facilities in Nigeria between 1995 and 2004 by paying approximately $180 million in bribes to Nigerian officials. “The successful prosecution of KBR, and its agreement to pay a more than $400 million fine, demonstrates that no one is above the law,†said Rita M. Glavin acting…
The Defense Contract Audit Agency  has issued new guidelines for reporting fraud found during contract audits. In this Feb. 9 memo first reported by the Center for Public Integrity, DCAA’s assistant director for operations, Karen Cash, said if an auditor finds potential fraud– such as repeated over billing, false labor charges, improper transfers or bribes—the auditor can refer those cases to the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, even if the auditor cannot prove those questioned costs are fraudulent. “There is no requirement for the auditor to prove the existence of fraud or other contractor irregularities†before referring suspected cases to the Defense investigators,…