Defense Secretary Robert Gates says he will convert 11,000 acquisition contracting jobs to Defense employees and hire 9,000 more government acquisition staff by 2015. He plans to start with 4,100 employees in fiscal 2010, the budget he presented at a news conference today. You can read his full budget speech here.
Browsing: Procurement
The Defense Department’s reporting of fraud cases to the Justice Department dropped 76 percent during the Bush Administration, according to Justice Department data obtained by the non-profit Center for Public Integrity. During the same period, contracting at the department (and government in general) more than doubled, the report notes. This leaves the question: did the department underreport fraud? The story suggests yes, citing concerns from the Defense Inspector General and the fact that investigative staffs shrunk alongside the decline in fraud reports. In December, new rules went into effect requiring contractors tell on themselves or face suspension or debarment if…
At a teleconference today with reporters to discuss Friday’s Alliant contract award, General Services Administration officials sounded quite confident there would be no protests of the contract awards from disgruntled losers. “We feel confident that we’re on solid ground,” said Mary Powers-King, GSA’s director of governmentwide acquisition contracts (GWACs). It turns out, GSA has a good reason to be confident there won’t be a protest: no one lost. But GSA officials didn’t disclose that fact at today’s teleconference. Nor did it disclose that the pool of eligible vendors shrank from 62 to 59 due to mergers and acquisitions.
The General Services Administration has chosen 59 of the 62 bidders for its $50 billion Alliant information technology contract, the agency announced today. This could be the start of another round of protests for the already protest-plagued procurement. This time last year, a federal court upheld the protest of eight bidders that claimed GSA didn’t properly evaluate their bids. All eight of those protesters were awarded contracts this time around, but it’s not clear if the losing bidders will seek to protest this latest decision. The awardees are: 1. Abacus Technology Corporation 2. Accenture National Security Services, LLC 3. Advanced…
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 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…
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…
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.
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,…