One of the great unknowns of sequestration is how many hours of federal agency staff time have been consumed by drafting, discussing and implementing the steps needed to handle the across-the-board spending cuts. And it’s not over yet. Under an April 1 deadline stemming from the continuing resolution approved last fall, more than three dozen agencies are supposed to give Congress updated operating plans that reflect the impact of the reductions for fiscal 2013. Inconveniently, however, lawmakers are still tinkering with a final version of the FY13 budget, meaning that some agencies—the Defense Department in particular—may have to rewrite those…
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The Department of the Navy will not award a contract next month for its Next Generation Enterprise Network as planned. Navy officials had originally planned to award one or two contracts by Feb. 12 to develop the massive private network, known as NGEN, but the award date has been pushed back to May 2013. “Due to the complexities of the NGEN requirements, we are changing our contract award estimate in order to ensure a complete and thorough review of offerors’ bids,” Ed Austin, spokesman for the Program Executive Office for Enterprise Information Systems, said in a statement. Three companies have…
For the first time in a long time, more federal contractors reported decreases in their government contracting revenue last fiscal year than those who saw increases, according to a Grant Thornton survey of about 100 contractors. Thirty-eight percent of contractors suffered reductions in revenue over the past year, compared with 36 percent that saw revenue increases and 26 percent that experienced no significant change, according to the annual Government Contractor Survey released last week. Professional Services Council sponsored the survey. “This year’s survey shows more revenue shrinkage than growth and a plunge in net profit, with the majority of contractors…
Nine companies have been awarded spots on an intelligence training contract worth $750 million over five years, the Defense Department announced today. Out of 24 proposals submitted, nine awards were made on Oct. 26 to: BAE of McLean,Va. Battelle Memorial Institute of Columbus,Ohio Booz Allen Hamilton of McLean,Va. Cyberspace Solutions LLC of Reston,Va. Intrepid Solutions Services Inc. of Falls Church,Va. Prescient Edge Corp. of Falls Church,Va. SAIC of McLean,Va. Six 3 Intelligence Solutions of McLean,Va. SRA of Fairfax,Va. The indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract will expire Nov. 30, 2017, according to the announcement. Work will be performed in Washington DC; Quantico, Va.;…
Security measures intended to prevent the placement of roadside bombs on a major highway in Afghanistan were improperly installed, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction said in a safety alert last week. The “culvert denial systems” were designed to prevent insurgents from placing improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in roadway culverts, according to the alert, which was sent to the commanders of the U.S. Central Command and U.S. Forces-Afghanistan. “Through our preliminary investigative work, we estimate that a large number of culvert denial systems might have been falsely reported by Afghan contractors as complete when, in fact, the denial systems…
The Government Accountability Office on Monday denied a protest against Lockheed Martin’s $4.6 billion contract award to support the Pentagon’s global data network. In its June protest to GAO, Science Applications International Corp. claimed that the Defense Information Systems Agency unreasonably evaluated Lockheed’s technical risk and costs, according to GAO. SAIC also said that DISA failed to meaningfully investigate whether Lockheed had unequal access to information pertaining to the contract, which would have been an organizational conflict of interest (OCI). GAO determined that DISA’s evaluation of Lockheed’s proposal was “reasonable and consistent with [the] solicitation’s evaluation criteria,” Ralph White, GAO’s managing…
The Navy has awarded a $1.9 billion order for more aerial reconnaissance and sub-hunting aircraft to Boeing, the agency announced Friday. The low-rate initial production award for 11 P-8A Poseidon aircraft is a modification to a previously awarded fixed-price-incentive-firm contract and follows two orders last year for 13 aircraft. The fleet will ” bolster the service’s anti-submarine, anti-surface warfare and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities,” Boeing said in a news release today. Boeing has delivered three of the P-8As, which are based on the company’s 737-800 commercial airplane, the company said. The Navy plans to purchase 117 to replace its P-3 fleet. Most of…
Defense contractor Paragon Dynamics Inc. has agreed to pay $1.15 million to settle allegations that it improperly obtained bid and proposal information for National Reconnaissance Office contracts, federal prosecutors announced Tuesday. Paragon Dynamics, a software research and development firm based in Aurora, Colo., allegedly obtained bid and proposal information from competitor Raytheon Corp. in fiscal 2009, while Raytheon was competing on National Reconnaissance Office contracts, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Colorado said in the news release. The NRO is in charge of designing, launching and maintaining America’s intelligence satellites. A Paragon Dynamics employee with access to a Raytheon facility in Aurora allegedly used…
The average compensation package of the chief executive officer for one of the top five Pentagon contractors is roughly $21.5 million, according to an analysis by the Project on Government Oversight. Ben Freeman, an investigator for the government watchdog group, looked at the compensation packages of CEOs at Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, Northrup Grumman, and Raytheon reported in the firms’ Securities and Exchange Commission filings. The Defense Department — and therefore, taxpayers — pay for part of contractors’ executive compensation, which is billed as part of the indirect overhead rates on contracts. Some lawmakers are pushing measures to reduce how much contractors can receive for executive…
To date, the Army has migrated 500,000 email accounts to the cloud, according to a news release. The Army expects to move a total of 1.6 million email users from disparate local servers to centralized servers operated by the Defense Information Systems Agency by March 2013. The Army projects the move, which began January 2011, will save $380 million through fiscal year 2017. The migration hasn’t come without challenges, delays and much scrutiny. The Army was forced to suspend the migration in December after concerned lawmakers temporarily withheld funding for the program, pending a detailed review. About 520,000 people across the Defense Department, including the Joint…