With the end of the fiscal year upon us, the “feeding frenzy,” as I like to call it, is in full swing. With possible sweeping budgets on the horizon through sequestration, and overall declines in revenues, agencies are unloading end-of-year dollars at a dizzying pace. It should be particularly good times for small businesses, asRead… Read more »
According to a July 26 report (.pdf) by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), numerous deficiencies with the position Chief Acquisition Officer (CAO) exist, a rule resulting from the 2003 Services Acquisition Reform Act (Pub. L. No. 108-136). The 2003 law required 16 agencies to appoint CAOs to help assure management and oversight of acquisition activitiesRead… Read more »
A recent protest decision by Planned Systems International Inc., of Columbia, Maryland, illustrates the reality of the federal budget: price is the most important factor is source selection decisions. Lee Dougherty, and attorney at General Councel, nailed it: …In a footnote the GAO also mentioned that PSI showed a lack of understanding between price reasonablenessRead… Read more »
Since coming onboard as new Administrator of The Office of Federal Procurement Policy (OFPP), Joe Jordan has seemingly looked to policy, regulations, and guidance on tactical execution to help solve the procurement woes that are being faced by the federal government. However, it has been some time since OFPP focused on what really is theRead… Read more »
The “final” report on Iraq reconstruction was released recently, and I have seen little media attention to the astonishing level of waste, incompetence, and outright theft that the report highlights. How much money is unaccounted for? According to the report, nobody knows. After years of trying to account for the billions we poured into theRead… Read more »
Protests are back in the news, although they never really left. I have been writing about this issue for some time (here and here), but the problem has only exploded in the last five years with the economic implosion, and now sequestration and budgeting Armageddon possible on the horizon. A recent report from IBM’s CenterRead… Read more »
I always have to scratch my head at the curiosity of how the federal government operates in regards to budgetary matters. Although commercial best practices are all the rage in government, such as trying to leverage technologies and become more efficient, innovative, and agile, the one area that always seemed to be polar-opposite was theRead… Read more »
A recent disturbing story about facilities management by the General Services Administration (GSA) in Chattanooga is a perfect template for how poor (or little) acquisition planning, combined with inadequate market research, creates an environment where questionable acquisition strategy decisions are created. The result is a typical one, where sole-source contracts are created at prices thatRead… Read more »
Last month, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a new report in April 2012 detailing a continuing issue at the Department of Defense (DoD) that is not foreign across government; the lack of transparency when it come to service contracts. The GAO report looks at two issues inherent in the struggles at DoD; lack ofRead… Read more »
The issue of subcontracts management is a badly needed topic that has gotten little attention recently, either through proposed legislation, or anywhere else. I attended the Acquisition Excellence 2012 Conference a few weeks ago, jointly sponsored by the American Council for Technology (ACT) – Industry Advisory Council (IAC) and the General Services Administration, discussing withRead… Read more »