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…
Browsing: Procurement
Sony Corp. lately has been trying to drum up interest in its PlayStation 3 video game console by emphasizing its versatility — such as the ability to play video games, DVDs and high-definition Blu Ray discs and browse the Internet — under the slogan “It only does everything.” But CNN is reporting that the Pentagon has come up with a use Sony may never have imagined: Link more than 2,500 consoles together to create a massive supercomputer. CNN said the military is shopping for 2,200 new PS3s to complement a supercomputer cluster already running on 336 PS3s. The key to the supercomputer is the PS3’s…
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…
Earlier today we mentioned that Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano is at the top of the list of candidates to take over the Homeland Security Department. And, as the Government Accountability Office reminds us in a new report released today, she would take over an agency full of management challenges. From the GAO: However, most initiatives related to defining and identifying the acquisition workforce and assessing workforce needs have not yet produced results and in some cases are progressing more slowly than originally projected. The department spends more than $10 billion each year on contracts — including some expensive and hard-to-manage…