New guidance from the White House seeks to get agencies to break “bloated, multi-year” projects for information technology acquisitions into more manageable chunks that can be delivered quickly and for less money. Lengthy acquisition and IT development efforts to deliver massive new systems over years lead to projects that wasted billions of dollars and arrived years behind schedule, Joe Jordan, the Office of Federal Procurement Policy administrator, and Steven VanRoekel, the federal chief information officer, said in a June 14 blog post. By the time some projects launched, technology was obsolete, the officials wrote. The guidance is meant to show IT, acquisition, finance and…
Browsing: Procurement
In anticipation of the government’s annual small business procurement scorecard this summer, a group of small business advocates and watchdog groups has asked top federal procurement officials to stop practices that inaccurately reflect how close agencies have come to meeting their goals. The scorecard measures the percent of federal prime and subcontract dollars awarded to small businesses, including women owned small businesses, small disadvantaged businesses, service disabled veteran-‐owned small businesses and small businesses operating in Historically Underutilized Business Zones. The federal government’s goal is to award 23 percent of its contract dollars to small businesses each year. During fiscal 2010, the federal government…
The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee will meet tomorrow to vet Joe Jordan, the President’s nominee to lead the Office of Federal Procurement Policy. Jordan joined the Office of Management and Budget in December as a senior adviser on procurement issues — the standard setup for potential nominees. Former OFPP Administrator Dan Gordon left the office Jan. 1. Members in the contracting community have expressed concern that Jordan’s nomination could be held up by the elections but no signs of that yet. Industry and federal officials are eager to get a leader in place. “In this time of budget austerity, procurement policies…
Building on an effort to improve communications between federal agencies and industry about government contracts, the Office of Federal Procurement Policy released part two of its “Myth-Busting” campaign to address misconceptions from industry. The memo reiterates the importance of “early, frequent and constructive engagement with industry,” especially for high-risk procurements and large information technology projects, that former OFPP administrator Dan Gordon introduced in a memo last year. That memo directed agencies to share more information with contractors. Here are four of the eight myths OFPP listed in its memo, which was released today by Acting Administrator Lesley Field: Myth: “The best way…
A recent call made by 26 senators to keep the Defense Department’s contract spending in check has prompted the Professional Services Council trade association to “correct the record.” Several Defense Department policies and spending cuts over the last few years have affected contractors, including a provision in the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act capping Defense Department spending on services for fiscal years 2012 and 2013 at the level of the president’s 2010 budget request, PSC President Stan Soloway said in an April 30 letter to Sens. Sherrod Brown and Kirsten Gillibrand. Brown and Gillibrand led 24 other senators on an April 25 letter…
NASA will take tips on how to form the next iteration of its governmentwide IT contract this summer, agency officials announced today. NASA’s Solutions for Enterprise Wide Procurement (SEWP) program office will hold 45-minute one-on-one interviews the weeks of July 9 and July 23 to get insight from contractors and interested parties on current and upcoming IT products and trends that will help build SEWP V, according to a news release posted on the SEWP website. Sixty interview spots are available on first-come basis at https://www.sewp.nasa.gov/registration. The registration is also open to anyone who wants to receive updates on SEWP V. SEWP V, like its predecessors, will be a governmentwide acquisiton…
A Senate bill that would give federal contract employees the same whistleblower protections as federal employees passed the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee today. Senate bill 241, introduced by Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., would protect contractors who report improper spending or management on federal contracts from retaliation. Contract employees who witness contract fraud currently can bring a civil claim, in the name of the government, against contractors under the False Claims Act. If the claim is successful, the whistleblower could receive up to 30 percent of the recovered funds. However, the False Claims Act does not protect whistleblowers who witness waste,…
An executive order that would extend discrimination protections to gay federal workers is not forthcoming, a senior administration official said Thursday. Instead, the Obama administration is hoping that a bill mulling in Congress for the last 18 years will eventually bring about the workplace protections that gay rights advocates and lawmakers have been seeking. Lawmakers have proposed but never passed legislation to extend workforce discrimination protections to cover sexual orientation during almost every session of Congress since 1994. Language to cover gender identity discrimination was added to the proposed bill, called the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, in 2007. But the bill itself…
Some say yes, at least for this year, the time has passed for President Obama to issue an executive order that would require federal contractors to disclose their political contributions. But some transparency advocates say a window of opportunity still exists for transparency into corporate political contributions. The door is still open if the administration does not tie the award of contracts to political disclosure, the main objection of critics, Scott Amey, general counsel for the Project on Government Oversight, said Monday. The administration instead should require anyone who receives federal money, including grant recipients, to disclose their political contribution information after award,…
A handful of agencies are taking steps to improve coordination between program managers, contracting officers and contractors in hopes of delivering less wasteful, more effective IT acquisitions. The Energy Department, for example, is using a series of agency-wide meetings to share ideas on what’s being bought and what contracts are used in certain information technology arenas, such as mobility, open government and geospatial, Pete Tseronis, the department’s chief technology officer, said at the Acquisition Excellence conference Thursday in Washington, D.C. Companies can attend the events and network with the agency’s program managers and contracting officers, Tseronis said. But he has heard…