Past Performance Proposal
September 3rd, 2009 | Agencies Procurement Regulation | Posted by Elise Castelli
The folks who draw up the Federal Acquisition Regulation have issued their proposal to enact a section of the 2009 Defense authorization meant to ensure a contractor’s poor past performance is not overlooked during the contract award process.
The proposed rule published in today’s Federal Register creates a new database called the “Federal Awardee Performance and Integrity Information System,” or FAPIIS for short. Contracting officers will be required to use this centralized database when making contract and task order awards.
The timing of the proposal couldn’t be better. Last month, acquisition officials answered some tough questions from Congress about how they use — or don’t use — past performance information. The hearings were prompted by two damning Government Accountability Office reports.
In April, GAO reported contracting officials didn’t use the Past Performance Information Retrieval System because its information was outdated, incomplete and unreliable. A May GAO report found contracting officers didn’t tie performance to the award fees paid to contractors for good work.
The proposed FAPIIS database aims to address some of the issues regarding past performance information by tying together information from two existing databases — the Excluded Parties List System and Past Performance Information Retrieval System — and creating new reporting requirements for government officials and contractors.
Under the proposed rule:
- Contracting officers will have to report any contract termination for default and any “determination of non-responsibility.†A determination of non-responsibility means the contractor isn’t a responsible vendor because of poor past performance, a lack of integrity or a lack of business ethics.
- Suspension and debarment officials will have to submit any administrative agreement reached with a contractor to avoid suspension or debarment from government contracting.
- Contractors with contracts and grants totaling more than $10 million will also have to report on any administrative proceedings against them, in addition to civil and criminal proceedings.
The council will accept comments on the proposed rule until Oct. 5.
Tags: past performance
OMB to release procurement policies today!
July 29th, 2009 | Procurement Regulation Uncategorized | Posted by Elise Castelli
The Office of Management and Budget will release three policy memos today that promise to reform how government uses contractors.
One memo directs agencies on how to manage the multi-sector workforce. This memo states that agencies don’t have a handle on how contractor employees are used in their offices. It orders agencies to:
- Coordinate their program, human capital, acquisition and finance offices to strategically plan for outsourcing.
- Conduct a pilot program to test multi-sector workforce management plans
- Develop guidelines to insource inherently governmental functions, work that closely supports those functions and work that could be more cheaply performed by federal employees.
A second memo orders agencies to review existing contracts and acquisition practices to “develop a plan that will save 7 percent of baseline contract spending by the end of FY 2011″ and to “reduce by 10 percent the share of dollars obligated in FY 2010 under new contract actions that are awarded with high-risk contracting authorities,” such as cost-reimbursement contracts. The hope is to save $40 billion governmentwide.
The final memo outlines new a Federal Acquisition Regulation to capture and share more past performance information about government contractors.
OMB is holding a news conference on the new guidance shortly. We’ll have more details for you later on today at FederalTimes.com.
Tags: procurement guidance
Calm before the storm
May 4th, 2009 | 2010 Budget Homeland Security Regulation | Posted by Gregg Carlstrom
Okay, maybe not the best metaphor, since it’s been raining all day in Washington.
Nonetheless: In the next five days, the Obama administration is probably going to release a more detailed 2010 budget proposal, its cybersecurity review, and the details of the bank “stress tests.”
Busy week. The details of the stress tests have been slowly leaking out — Citigroup and Bank of America both need more capital — and it’s an open secret that the cybersecurity review will call for a big White House role in cybersecurity. But it will be interesting to dig into the specifics. And, of course, there’s the budget, which will surely set off a political firestorm on Capitol Hill. (We’ll have full coverage of the budget after it’s released on Thursday.)
Tags: banks, budget, cybersecurity
Clock runs out on another midnight regulation
April 27th, 2009 | Interior Regulation | Posted by Gregg Carlstrom
We’ve been reporting for months on the Bush administration’s “midnight regulations,” the flurry of often controversial last-minute rules approved in November and December.
The president already announced plans to undo the “conscience rule,” one of most controversial regulations.
And today another rule met its end: Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced that he’s seeking the end of the “mountaintop mining” rule that allowed coal companies to dump the “fill” — the leftover rocks from mining — in streams.
“We’re cleaning up a major misstep from the previous administration,” Salazar said today at a press conference. “This was bad public policy… it simply doesn’t pass muster.”
Technically, the rule isn’t gone yet. Interior asked the Justice Department to file a pleading in the U.S. District Court; the suit will claim that the regulation has serious legal deficiencies, Salazar said. The courts could then formally strike down the rule.
That verdict would mean coal companies will once again be governed under a 1983 rule, approved during the Reagan administration, which prohibits dumping within 100 feet of streams.
Salazar said the move was largely symbolic, because many states are still using the 1983 rule (coal mining is regulated at the state level). Only Tennessee decided to adopt last year’s regulation.
Tags: mining, regulations
Food, drugs and data
March 2nd, 2009 | Agencies Food and Drug Administration Regulation | Posted by Gregg Carlstrom
The Government Accountability Office has a new report out on the Food and Drug Administration: Apparently the agency doesn’t have enough information about the ingredients in dietary supplements to decide if they’re safe.
..a lack of information is one of the most significant factors that limit the FDA’s ability to identify and properly act on safety concerns regarding dietary supplements and foods with added dietary ingredients.
I think there’s an important point to draw from this report. We talk a lot about the FDA’s budget and staffing woes. And the agency is certainly underfunded — you can’t expect the FDA to properly regulate foreign food producers when it has less than a half-dozen foreign offices.
But I think we’re also learning that the FDA does a poor job gathering and analyzing data.
Tags: GAO
Bush's most controversial regulations: still standing
January 21st, 2009 | Regulation | Posted by Gregg Carlstrom
President Obama put a freeze on new regulation yesterday — nothing will be approved until his Cabinet secretaries have a chance to review it.
The announcement came after months of frantic “midnight regulation” by federal agencies. And it’s obviously intended to block new rules left unfinished by the Bush administration.
But will it affect some of the most controversial Bush-era regulations? I’ve been digging through old copies of the Federal Register — a fun way to spend the afternoon, I assure you — and the answer is a resounding “no.” Some of the most controversial rules are already in effect.
Wondering which ones? The (incomplete) list is after the jump.
Tags: BLM, Interior Department
A temporary regulatory freeze
January 20th, 2009 | Regulation | Posted by Gregg Carlstrom
Rahm Emanuel issued a memo this afternoon freezing all government regulation, according to a press release from the White House.
The memo tells agency heads not to submit any new regulations (proposed or final) until they can be reviewed by a Cabinet official appointed by President Obama. It also orders agencies to withdraw any regulations not yet published in the Federal Register.
And it advises them to delay implementing any final regulations that have not yet taken effect — an effort to delay the dozens of Bush-era “midnight regulations.”
This is not unprecedented: Former White House chief of staff Andrew Card issued a similar memo when President Bush took office in 2001.
More details tomorrow as we follow up on this.
Tags: Regulation
Transition Watch: Out with the old
January 19th, 2009 | Facilities Regulation Transition White House | Posted by Elise Castelli
There are 8,600 facilities with at least one set of the official portraits of President Bush and Vice President Cheney, and at noon eastern tomorrow the portraits will have to be “removed and respectfully disposed†of, according to a GSA spokeswoman.
Out.
The spokeswoman didn’t expand on what “respectfully dispose†means, so your guess is as good as ours.
The portraits will be replaced by the official photos of President Obama and Vice President Biden as soon as prints become available, which probably means most offices won’t see these smiling faces until March, according to GSA.
 In. |
 Also in, but it probably will not be this photo as this is not his official vice presidential photo. |
Tags: Barack Obama, Dick Cheney, George Bush, Joe Biden, official portraits
Nudging regulation in the right direction
January 12th, 2009 | Regulation Transition | Posted by Gregg Carlstrom
One of President-elect Barack Obama’s most interesting nominations is Cass Sunstein, his pick to head OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.
We’ll profile him in next Monday’s Federal Times — like I did this week with Nancy Killefer, Obama’s new chief performance officer — but a few early thoughts:
Sunstein is a law professor at Harvard University; before that, he taught at the University of Chicago. He’s an old friend of the president-elect from his UChicago teaching days. And he’s written extensively on government regulation, including his most recent book, Nudge.
The book makes the case for what Sunstein calls “libertarian paternalism.” You might think that sounds like an oxymoron. But Sunstein, and his co-author, UChicago professor Richard Thaler, say it offers a “third way,” something between being simply pro- or anti-regulation.
In many domains, including environmental protection, family law, and school choice, we will be arguing that better governance requires less in the way of government coercion and constraint, and more in the way of freedom to choose. If incentives and nudges replace requirements and bans, government will be both smaller and more modest.
So what’s a “nudge”?
Tags: Cass Sunstein, OIRA
Breaking: E-Verify requirements for contractors on hold
January 9th, 2009 | Homeland Security Procurement Regulation | Posted by Elise Castelli
Update: Full story here.
Starting Jan. 15, new contracts awarded by agencies were supposed to mandate that vendors verify the immigration status of their workers using the Homeland Security Department’s E-Verify system.
But Federal Times has learned that the department has decided to postpone the implementation of that requirement until at least Feb. 20 due to a lawsuit filed by five industry groups.
Lawrence Lorber, an attorney for the plaintiffs in the case, which includes the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, tells us that the government was responding to the plaintiffs request for a stay in the rule’s implementation.
More to come.
Tags: E-Verify