The Treasury Department’s Bureau of Public Debt is looking for a contractor to run a couple of three-hour discussions on “Humor in the Workplace.” According to this FedBizOpps notice, which topped the Drudge Report today, the programs will “discuss the power of humor in the workplace, the close relationship between humor and stress, and why humor is one of the most important ways that we communicate in business and office life.” The requirements: Participants shall experience demonstrations of cartoons being created on the spot. The contractor shall have the ability to create cartoons on the spot about BPD jobs. The…
Browsing: Procurement
While researching a story on how civilian government vehicles are armored against bombs and gunfire, I stumbled upon this fascinating article about the first armored car used by the government. The day after Pearl Harbor, the Secret Service pressed Al Capone’s confiscated 1928 Cadillac into service to transport President Franklin D. Roosevelt to Congress to deliver his famous “infamy speech” asking for a declaration of war against the Axis Powers. The night of Dec. 7, 1941, the Secret Service worried that German or Japanese agents might try to assassinate FDR, so they decided to drive the president around in armored cars…
The incoming General Services Administration chief should no longer require vendors to give the government their best prices, according to an advisory panel. Instead, GSA should insist that agency customers buying products and services worth at least $100,000 from GSA’s federal supply schedules program obtain at least three bids from vendors before making a purchase. These and other recommendations are outlined in a report finalized by the Multiple Award Schedule Advisory Panel today. The 15-member panel was formed last year by former GSA Administrator Lurita Doan to suggest ways to improve the federal supply schedules program, also known as the…
In April, several senate Democrats, led by Maryland’s Barbara Mikulski, introduced a bill to convert some contracted work to federal performance and otherwise prevent the government from competing federal jobs with the private sector. Mikulski’s “CLEAN UP Act” – short for “Correction of Longstanding Errors in Agencies Unsustainable Procurements Act” – drew applause from unions and criticism from industry groups. But now Senate Republicans are getting in on the act with their own bill designed to do the opposite. Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., introduced the “Freedom From Government Competition Act” yesterday. The bill mandates federal agencies rely on the private sector for…
KBR was treated unfairly at a hearing last week discussing the contractor’s performance under the Army’s key logistics contract, a top company official wrote the Wartime Contracting Commission on May 12. William Bodie, KBR’s interim president for government and infrastructure, wrote in the letter obtained by Federal Times: At no time during the May 4 hearing was there discussion or reference as to how to evaluate contractor performance in a wartime environment, nor were there any questions probing these issues which are fundamental to the Commission’s mission. Instead the Commission set aside policy debate in favor of judgmental and biased statements…
My colleague Gregg Carlstrom already highlighted the budget cuts that the White House said will lead to $17 billion in savings in 2010. But I wanted to highlight a few items tucked into that figure that represent savings that came not from cuts, but from better contract management. Among the items dubbed “other savings” in the White House’s “Terminations, Reductions and Savings” report released today: The Environmental Protection Agency’s consolidation of 22 information technology contracts for desktop support saved the agency $2 million. The new, single contract centralized help desk support, provided more energy efficient equipment and improved security. The…
Industry is “deeply concerned” about a bill meant to bring work performed by contractors in house, Professional Services Council President Stan Soloway said in a May 5 letter to bill sponsor Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md. Mikulski introduced the Correction of Longstanding Errors in Agencies Unsustainable Procurements (CLEAN UP) Act last week. The bill would ban the use of public-private competitions until agencies ensure inherently governmental work and work closely associated with inherently governmental functions is performed by federal employees. Agencies would also have to inventory contracts and give feds the opportunity to compete for outsourced work, even if the work can…
Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., is expected to introduce a bill tomorrow that will suspend government’s use of public-private competitions for federal work. If Mikulski’s Correction of Longstanding Errors in Agencies Unsustainable Procurements (CLEAN UP) Act becomes law, agencies will be barred from using competition rules set under Office of Management and Budget Circular A-76 until they implement the following provisions: Amend the A-76 process to include the full cost of conducting a competition, to charge in-house bidders only for actual overhead costs, to abolish automatic re-competition of work won by federal employees, and to impose a firm time limit on…
A lot has been made about the 17 percent up-tick in protests handled by the Government Accountability Office last year, but today GAO released a long-awaited trend report that shows, historically speaking, protest levels are relatively low. GAO first got the protest authorities we know today in 1984. Since then the number of protests it handles have dropped significantly from 2,240 in 1989 to 1,027 last year. But protests have been inching up since 2001, mirroring the rise in procurement spending, according to the report. Last year’s rise is primarily due to GAO’s expanded authority to handle protests of task orders…
Want to hear more on Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ plans to dramatically reshape his department’s programs and priorities? You can watch him discuss those plans in an interview tonight on PBS’ The New Hour with Jim Lehrer. Gates announced yesterday his long-awaited plan to make some deep program cuts. His plan would end some defense programs such as the Air Force’s F-22 fighter and combat search-and-rescue helicopter program, the Army’s Future Combat Systems armored vehicle programs, the Navy’s new DDG-1000 destroyer, and the Marine Corps’ presidential helicopter program. And he proposes to beef up spending on other priorities such as…