Government errors could mean big problems for contractors
November 17th, 2009 | Agencies Agency Management OMB Procurement | Posted by Elise Castelli
Contractors could face suspension, debarment or financial penalties if they fail to return and report an improper payment made by the government…even if the improper payment is the government’s fault.
That’s what an executive order meant to curb the government’s rate of erroneous payments will say, Peter Orszag, Office of Management and Budget director, told reporters during a Nov. 17 briefing on the value of improper payments made by the government in 2009.
Currently, contractors face no penalties when the government discovers an improper payment was made. All contractors have to do is pay back the sum without interest or penalty. The executive order, which will be issued in the coming week, will change that by allowing agencies to suspend, debar and fine contractors that fail to report these payments. That will create strong incentive for contractors to be vigilant in monitoring their government payments, said Danny Werfel, the controller of OMB’s Office of Federal Financial Management.
Werfel said:
The way it works today is if we give a contractor money that they have not earned and they never report it to us, but we just so happen to find it through an audit, all they have to do is make us whole. There are no additional damages on top of that. And that’s what the executive order would pursue as a way of incentivizing contractors to immediately tell us where we made an error, so they’re part of the solution and not part of the problem.”
Tags: Danny Werfel, improper payments, OMB, Peter Orszag
Updated: Sound off on going green
October 27th, 2009 | Agencies Agency Management White House | Posted by Tim Kauffman
Update: Nearly 2,800 ideas for greening the federal government have been submitted so far through the White House’s GreenGov Challenge. Those ideas have been voted on more than 93,000 times since voting began Oct. 19.
Federal employees and military service members have until Saturday to make their suggestions and cast their votes.
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Original post: Think you have a great idea for how the government can reduce its environmental footprint? The Obama administration wants to know it.
The White House is challenging federal civilian employees and military service members to come up with ways in which the government can get to green in six key areas: reducing carbon emissions, conserving energy, conserving water, eliminating waste, building sustainable facilities and purchasing sustainable products.
From now until Oct. 31, employees can log onto the new GreenGov website and post their ideas. They can also vote on ideas submitted by other employees.
The most popular ideas in each area will be presented next month to a committee of senior officials from each agency who are charged with meeting the goals laid out earlier this month in President Barack Obama’s executive order on greening the government’s operations.
Tags: GreenGov, sustainability
About those new OMB guidelines…
October 12th, 2009 | Agencies Agency Management | Posted by Gregg Carlstrom
A request for our readers: I know OMB’s new performance management guidelines are still pretty new, and I’m sure many agencies haven’t had a chance to discuss them yet.
But if your agency is planning to apply for the extra program evaluation funding that’s available in 2010, send me an e-mail — I want to hear from you.
Tags: performance management
New OMB performance guidelines
October 7th, 2009 | Agencies Agency Management OMB | Posted by Gregg Carlstrom
OMB director Peter Orszag sent an 8-page memo to agencies today outlining new performance management guidelines. Here it is (pdf).
Thoughts to come later this morning once I’ve actually had a chance to read it…
Obama orders agencies to cut carbon footprints
October 5th, 2009 | Agencies Agency Management White House | Posted by Tim Kauffman
President Barack Obama issued an executive order this afternoon that requires agencies for the first time to measure and reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.
Obama nixed an earlier idea, included in a draft executive order I reported on back in August, to set a governmentwide percentage target. Instead, each agency must recommend its own target for cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. It will be up to the heads of the Council on Environmental Quality and the Office of Management and Budget to approve those targets.
Obama’s order also sets new requirements for cutting gas and water consumption, reducing landfill waste and purchasing products and services that meet environmental sustainability mandates.
We’ll have more on the order at www.federaltimes.com and in next week’s issue of Federal Times.
More concerns about DCAA audit opinions
September 22nd, 2009 | Agency Management Congress Defense Procurement | Posted by Elise Castelli
Earlier today I previewed reports the Government Accountability Office and the Defense Department Inspector General will release tomorrow highlighting the depth of auditing problems at the Defense Contract Audit Agency.
But these watchdogs are not the only ones with concerns about DCAA’s audit management. The Wartime Contracting Commission — a bipartisan, congressionally chartered panel tasked with making recommendations to improve contingency contracting — released this report today calling on DCAA to abandon the all-or-nothing approach it takes when rendering opinions on contractor business systems.
In December, DCAA scrapped its opinion that allowed business systems with minor deficiencies to be deemed “inadequate in part.” A prior GAO report that found the auditors in DCAA’s western region were pressured by supervisors to change the middle-ground opinions to “adequate” in order to please contractors. Contractors can only directly bill the government for work if their systems are deemed fully “adequate,” or reliable. If a contractor can directly bill the government, it doesn’t have to go through a lengthy invoice approval process.
But the commission, which has held a series of hearings about the adequacy of contractors’ cost estimating and accounting systems, found the new pass-fail policy increases the government’s risk of wasting money because it diminishes the importance of an inadequate audit finding.
Under the new rules, a system is deemed “inadequate,” or unreliable, if even one minor aspect of the accounting system is broken. Such a blanket finding is “not informative enough to help contracting officers make effective decisions” about how to hold the contractor accountable for fixing problems, according to the commission report.
The report went on to say:
Rather than giving system deficiencies more importance, it seems to have the opposite effect — undermining the significance of the audit findings and weakening their effectiveness…Without any reasonable provision for more accurately describing systems that are less than perfect, contractors and contracting officers find the ‘adequate/inadequate’ options too restrictive.”
A graduated grading system is needed to give contracting officers clear information about the monetary losses that could result from a system deficiency and the level of risk that deficiency poses, so contracting officers can decide how to hold contractors accountable, the report said.
Tags: DCAA, DCMA, DoD IG, GAO, Wartime Contracting Commission
A new study on fixing PART
July 6th, 2009 | Agencies Agency Management OMB | Posted by Gregg Carlstrom
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.
Tags: Accenture, Georgetown University, OMB, OMB Watch, PART
Public discussion on official secrets starts today
June 29th, 2009 | Agency Management Government reform White House | Posted by Elise Castelli
To follow up on Gregg’s earlier post…
The White House is also hosting an online discussion about how it should revise the policy governing classified national security information.
Until Wednesday, the Public Interest Declassification Board will host a “Declassification Policy Forum” through the White House Open Government Blog to take comments on President Barack Obama’s May 27 memo ordering a review of the executive order outlining classification policy.
Through the discussion, the White House hopes to answer the following:
- “Are you satisfied with the current executive order? What has worked? What hasn’t worked? What should a new executive order include that is not in the current order?”
- “How can the government make the declassification process more transparent?”
- “Should the government prioritize what it declassifies? If so, based on historical significance or other criteria?”
To view or participate in the discussion click here.
If online discussions aren’t your thing, but you want to let your voice be heard, the declassification board is hosting a traditional public hearing at the National Archives and Records Administration’s Washington, D.C. headquarters on July 8. The Federal Register has details on how to participate. You can also email comments to the board directly at pidb@nara.gov.
OMB welcomes Zients
June 22nd, 2009 | Agency Management Congress Government reform OMB Transition | Posted by Elise Castelli
The nation has its first chief performance officer.
The Senate confirmed Jeffrey Zients‘ nomination Friday. Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag welcomed his new deputy for management with this blog post.
Now we wait to see what changes Zients will bring to federal performance management. He’s had a successful track record imbuing positive performance into private sector companies through his work at the Corporate Executive Board Company and the Advisory Board Company.
Tags: chief performance officer, confirmation, Jeffrey Zients
Will you take the Obama challenge?
April 27th, 2009 | Agency Management Government reform | Posted by Steve Watkins
Want a chance to meet President Barack Obama? Come up with a way to save a lot of money at your agency.
The president laid out a challenge to federal employees this weekend in his weekly blog/radio address, calling for new thinking and creativity among the federal workforce:
“That’s why we’ll establish a process through which every government worker can submit their ideas for how their agency can save money and perform better. We’ll put the suggestions that work into practice. And later this year, I will meet with those who come up with the best ideas to hear firsthand about how they would make your government more efficient and effective.”
There is far to go in modernizing federal agencies to better apply technology, but there also is far to go in modernizing the mindset of how government operates and views itself, he said:
“So much of our government was built to deal with different challenges from a different era. Too often, the result is wasteful spending, bloated programs, and inefficient results. It’s time to fundamentally change the way that we do business in Washington. To help build a new foundation for the 21st century, we need to reform our government so that it is more efficient, more transparent, and more creative. That will demand new thinking and a new sense of responsibility for every dollar that is spent.”
In that spirit, President Obama said he plans to motivate agencies to find savings within their current budgets by allowing them to keep a portion of money they don’t spend and reinvest it elsewhere toward programs that are more effective. The end goal, he said: a smaller budget and more effective government programs.
In addition, Obama said he’s also looking for ideas from businesses and reform experts on how to make government operate leaner and more smartly. Later this year, he said he will host a forum on reforming government for the 21st century as a way to bring outside voices into the government reform discussion.
So, will you take the Obama challenge? Tell us what great ideas you have for saving money.
Tags: Barack Obama