The increasing chorus of calls for more accountability reaches beyond recent demands for firing officials at the IRS, VA, and GSA for various perceived misdeeds. Just what is accountability, and how can it be seen as a constructive, instead of a punitive, element of public management? Recent legislation imposes new accountability requirements in the formRead… Read more »
Our recent blog post about accountability had some good discussions on the GS-1102 LinkedIn group (closed group) about who actually is responsible for accountability. Should it rest squarely on government? What responsibility does the contractor have when the government is asleep at the switch? A recent issue seems to have blurred that line, prompting theRead… Read more »
The Office of Federal Procurement Policy (OFPP) is hoping that third time really is the charm in its seemingly desperate attempts at getting agencies to properly document contractor performance using the Past Performance Information Retrieval System (PPIRS). Although similar memos in 2009 and 2011 (here and here) focused on this issue of poor past performanceRead… Read more »
The Sunlight Foundation reports that $1.55 trillion dollars has misrepresented in federal spending in 2011. That baffling number is just one of the findings for the Clearspending report. But how can that happen? And how can agencies adequately manage when they don’t have a firm grip on their spending? Kaitlin Devin is a senior webRead… Read more »
The Obama Administration should consider implementing a President’s Management Agenda (PMA) in its second term. The PMA structure used during the Bush administration clearly articulated management goals in areas such as financial accountability, human resources, competitive sourcing, e.government, and budget and performance integration. The PMA scorecard provided transparency with respect to status and results andRead… Read more »
As the 2012 Fiscal Year comes to a close, procurement shops are in full gear awarding contracts in the shadow of sequestration. Many large firms are also trying to close business after months of business development, only to see last minute decisions to make their solicitation a small business set-aside. This creates another potential avenueRead… Read more »
In a recent breakfast hosted by the Coalition for Government Procurement, Office of Federal Procurement Policy Administrator Joe Jordan effectively punted on the notion of best value versus the realities of federal procurement; lowest priced offers win contracts. …Generally speaking, he said industry likes best-value procurements. They allow companies to propose higher prices, since officialsRead… Read more »
There seems to be a development that is coming more and more to the forefront: the case of the out-of-control Contracting Officer (KO). There are usually two paths to interactions with a KO, one being the KO who is overwhelmed with the workload, doing the best they can to handle it, and simply have veryRead… Read more »
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 »
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 »