Irony alert: In its quest to improve management of its finances, the Navy is having trouble managing the contractors who have received tens of millions of dollars to help the service meet congressionally imposed “audit-readiness” deadlines. That’s the takeaway from a newly released review by the Defense Department’s inspector general. One finding: The Navy’s Fleet Logistics Center office in Philadelphia spent $12.6 million on two task orders, “but did not adequately track whether the contractor met the requirements.” The report highlights other shortcomings in how Navy employees oversaw the contracting work, including failing to devise quality assurance plans for some…
Browsing: Accenture
Chris Smith will resign from his position as chief information officer at the Agriculture Department next month for an executive role at technology consulting firm Accenture Federal Services, the company announced Tuesday. Smith will begin his new role as the company’s chief technology and innovation officer on April 9, according to Accenture. He will be responsible for developing the technology agenda for Accenture’s federal business and managing the company’s federal service offerings in the areas of cloud computing, big data, logistics and supply chain and cost reduction. Smith has served as Agriculture’s CIO since 2009. Under his leadership the department migrated…
Accenture, OMB Watch and the Georgetown Public Policy Institute have a new report out (.pdf) on improving the government’s performance management system. If you’ve been following the Obama/performance management discussion for a while, you’ve probably heard many of the recommendations before: modify PART to focus on outcomes rather than numerical outputs; encourage federal managers to use the results; give Congress more input into the process. But it’s nice to see those ideas compiled into one report — particularly now that OMB has a chief performance officer who might act on them.
Citizenship and Immigration Services wants to replace the current immigration system — most forms are paper-based, and CIS frequently mails documents around the country — with an electronic system. But not as quickly as it hoped. The agency awarded a five-year, $500 million contract to IBM last month; this week, Accenture decided to protest the bid. A final decision on the protest is expected by March, according to the Government Accountability Office. “The protest is still very basic.. they haven’t really fleshed it out to any degree,” said Michael Aytes, acting deputy director at CIS. “While it’s in protest… we’re…