Friday Fun: Odd News Roundup
November 6th, 2009 | Uncategorized | Posted by Elise Castelli
Happy Friday! As we all ready for the weekend, here are a few offbeat stories with a federal angle to brighten your day:
- Angry residents of Lantana, Fla. sent a not so subtle message to Post Master General John Potter about his plans to close their local post office: 1,000 coconuts. Potter, in turn, donated the produce to the D.C. food bank Bread for the City. [h/t: DCist]
- The Smithsonian uses the photo sharing Web site Flickr to remind us of an era in photography where you couldn’t instantly share an image with thousands of your closest friends around the world without ever making a print. [h/t: NPR]
- The TSA now allows you to bring ice through security checkpoints, provided it is not partially melted. [The TSA Blog]
- Sesame Street marks its 40th anniversary on Tuesday. The stars of the PBS show are frequently federal spokesmuppets, as seen most recently in these ads raising awareness about flu prevention.
Tags: Friday Fun
GAO: Agency use of cost contracts is down?
October 30th, 2009 | Procurement Uncategorized | Posted by Elise Castelli
Agency use of risky cost-based contracts has dropped over the last six-years, but the number of contracts coded as “combination contracts” is on the rise, the Government Accountability Office found in a report released today.
Between 2003 and 2008, the value of cost-reimbursement contracts, which pay vendors for their actual costs to perform the work, grew from $120 billion to $136 billion. But as a percentage of overall dollars spent through the procurement process, use declined. In 2003, the $120 billion represented 34 percent of the $298 billion spent. In 2008, the $136 billion was just 26 percent of the $528 billion spent, GAO found.
The report comes in the same week as the Office of Management and Budget told how agencies they should reduce the use of these contracts by another 10 percent by Oct. 1, 2010.
“However, this overall downward trend is misleading,” GAO said in the report. “A significant increase has been reported for obligations using the ‘combination’ contract type, a category that based on GAO’s analysis of 2008 data, includes many contracts with cost-reimbursement obligations that are not recorded as such.”
In fiscal 2004, agencies spent less than 1 percent — or $1.3 billion — of government obligations on “combination” contracts. In 2008, use swelled to 8 percent or $39 billion of total contract spending. Defense was the largest user of the contracts in 2008, spending $34 billion of the $39 billion in “combination” contracts, GAO found. In addition, billions in contracts had no contract type designated for fiscal 2008, the report said.
Regardless of how much agencies spent through cost-reimbursement methods, as opposed to less risky fixed-price contracts, agencies were not monitoring the contracts carefully, GAO said.
Of 92 cost-based contacts GAO reviewed for the report, only half of the contractors had accounting systems government auditors found were accurate in tracking costs, GAO found. Twenty had no evidence that systems were adequate and 20 more had outdated determinations of accuracy, GAO said. Outdated accuracy determinations and inadequate systems put government at risk for making improper payments, the report said.
Tags: cost-based contracts, GAO
Update: Martha Johnson's nomination…still on hold
October 30th, 2009 | Uncategorized | Posted by Elise Castelli
Sen. Christopher “Kit” Bond, R-Mo., rose to speak on the Senate floor yesterday to inform everyone he’s not lifting the hold on Martha Johnson’s nomination to lead the General Services Administration until the GSA explains…again…why it decided to build a federally owned building to house 1,200 feds in downtown Kansas City, rather than taking the more costly lease-construction route. (A lease-construction project is when a contractor builds a space to government specs then leases it to the government.)
In the Oct. 29 floor statement, Bond expressed frustration that GSA decided to “pull the plug” on the lease-construction project that he and local leaders had worked with the Bush administration to get.
Bond claimed he was waiting for GSA’s response as to the future of the project, even though GSA did so in an Oct. 9 letter to Bond and other Missouri congressional delegates. GSA Public Building Service Commissioner Robert Peck wrote that the agency would take the less costly route of constructing a building GSA would own outright.
Bond said he hoped to lift the hold soon, possibly in “a matter of a couple of days.”
OMB procurement guidance now available
October 27th, 2009 | OMB Procurement Uncategorized | Posted by Elise Castelli
UPDATE: OMB says the definition of inherently governmental functions is still being worked on. Expect to hear something by the end of the year.
The Office of Management and Budget just released two long-awaited procurement reform memos. The first is about increasing competition while reducing risk in contracting. The second is about strategic planning for the civilian agency acquisition workforce.
So far no word on a A third piece of expected guidance meant to clarify the definition of inherently governmental functions was not released today as expected [see update above]. That memo will help agencies carry out earlier guidance to insource certain contractor-performed work.
A full story on the new guidance will be posted on FederalTimes.com later today.
Tags: A-76, acquisition workforce, contract competition, contract oversight, contract type, insourcing, outsourcing, procurement guidance
Feds know how to SAVE
October 19th, 2009 | Uncategorized | Posted by Elise Castelli
The Office of Management and Budget received nearly 40,000 ideas from federal employees recommending ways the government can save money in fiscal 2011.
When OMB’s SAVE Award contest closed on Oct. 14, federal employees had submitted 38, 484 ideas. An OMB panel will now review the submissions and send a handful of finalists to President Barack Obama to choose from. The winning entry will be announced next month. The winner gets to meet Obama and the idea will be included in the 2011 budget.
Now that nominations are closed, FedLine wants to know: Did you submit an idea? If so, what was it?
Martha Johnson, GSA Administrator in waiting, still waiting
October 14th, 2009 | Congress General Services Administration Uncategorized | Posted by Elise Castelli
Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., continues to hold up the vote on Martha Johnson’s nomination to lead the General Services Administration. Bond placed a hold on her confirmation this summer to squeeze the agency for information about why it wasn’t closing down the federally owned Bannister Complex outside Kansas City, Mo. and relocating staff to leased space downtown, as previously planned.
GSA’s new Public Building Service commissioner, Robert Peck, responded to Bond, Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo. and Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo., in a letter last week.
In the Oct. 9 letter, Peck explained that plans to close Bannister are still on the table, but GSA has changed its approach to obtaining new space. GSA is scrapping the proposal submitted to Congress last year to replace Bannister with a “lease-construction” project, where a private developer builds space to the government’s specifications and then leases it to the government. GSA has turned away from this plan because further research shows it will be cheaper in the long-term for GSA to build and own a new federal building downtown.
Peck wrote:
Neither leasing space, nor a lease-construction project is our preferred option. Fiscal analyses show that building and owning a federal building is the lowest long-term cost solution. Kansas City also has sufficient federal agencies in leased space to support incurring additional federal ownership of space. Accordingly, we are prepared to begin site selection and design for a new federal building in Kansas City’s central employment area as soon as we can secure the requisite congressional approvals and funding.
Peck also noted that before entering a lease-construction agreement, the agency first must hold a competition to see if suitable space is already available. Because Kansas City has many office building vacancies, a lease-construction project would likely turn into a lease, Peck said.
Despite these assurances, it appears Bond is not satisfied. According to today’s Kansas City Star, he has not lifted the hold on Johnson’s nomination. Bond’s spokeswoman Shana Marchio told the Star “we need answers on the how and when this project will move forward,” adding that “without those answers, we cannot know how to evaluate the message from GSA.”
Tags: Martha Johnson, Sen. Kit Bond
Agencies cannot SPOT combat contractors
October 2nd, 2009 | Procurement Uncategorized | Posted by Elise Castelli
Agencies are still having trouble spotting contractors on the battlefield, the Government Accountability Office reported today. That’s because they aren’t consistently using the new SPOT (Synchronized Redeployment and Operational Tracker) system designed to track information about contracts and contractor employees in Iraq and Afghanistan, GAO found in a new report.
Congress established the system in 2008 to help the Agency for International Development, the State Department and the Defense Department monitor and share information on contracts and contractor personnel in the combat zone. The information meant to be collected includes the number of contract personnel on the battlefield, the number of contractor employees killed or wounded, and the value and purpose of a contract.
However, each agency established different criteria for who must be registered. As a result, some required contractor personnel information isn’t in the system, GAO found. Because data varies on the nearly 226,500 contractor employees that are registered in the system, SPOT “data should not be used to identify trends or draw conclusions about contractor personnel numbers,” GAO said.
In addition, SPOT can’t track all the required contract information. For example, a memorandum between the agencies said contract values, competition information and descriptions of services must be pulled into SPOT from the Federal Procurement Data System-Next Generation (FPDS-NG). But GAO found:
This capability is not expected to be available until 2010. In the interim, the DOD officials overseeing SPOT’s development told us that SPOT users can manually enter competition information and descriptions, but there is no requirement for them to do so. Since SPOT is not designed to let users enter contract dollar values, the DOD officials stated that SPOT and FPDS-NG are being periodically merged to identify contract values. Even when the direct link is established, pulling FPDS-NG data into SPOT may present challenges because of how data are entered into SPOT.
Tags: contract oversight
Eliminating FEHBP? Not so fast.
September 24th, 2009 | Uncategorized | Posted by Rebecca Neal
Sen. Charles Grassley has introduced a health care amendment that would eliminate the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, but feds shouldn’t panic that they’ll be losing their health coverage as recent news stories have hinted.
Grassley’s amendment would have ended FEHBP and required feds to purchase insurance through state-based exchanges, just as average civilians would. But a modified version of the amendment accepted Tuesday as part of the Senate Finance Committee chairman’s mark weakens the language, allowing federal workers the option of leaving the FEHBP and enrolling in state exchanges.
Grassley, R-Iowa, offered his amendment to draw attention to a main point pushed by Republicans — why should federal employees receive coverage that’s much better than anything that would be offered through a public plan or a state-based health exchange? If a state-based exchange is good enough for the average taxpayer, why shouldn’t feds participate?
A Grassley staffer said the original amendment requiring feds to enroll in exchanges is a matter of fairness.
Sen. Grassley’s amendment to require elected officials and federal employees to buy insurance through exchanges is meant to apply the same standards to elected officials and federal employees as everyone else.”
The Senate Finance Committee’s markup of a draft health care bill is expected to continue into next week. We’ll keep you posted on any news affecting feds.
The green badge of preparedness
September 8th, 2009 | Homeland Security Uncategorized | Posted by Elise Castelli
“Be prepared,” that’s the Girl Scout motto. And now, a Girl Scout can earn a new, government-approved patch when she lives up to that ideal.
Today, the Homeland Security Department and the Girl Scouts of the USA unveiled the “preparedness” patch and a corresponding program to encourage young women and their families to be prepared for emergencies like storms, pandemics or terrorist attacks.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who is a former Girl Scout, said:
This new preparedness patch will increase citizen preparedness and enhance our country’s readiness for disasters.”
To earn the patch a scout must identify and prepare for emergencies, learn about emergency warning systems and complete community service.
No word on whether a box each of Thin Mints and Tagalongs would be a required addition to any emergency preparation kit, but this FedLine blogger (who was sadly not a scout) would strongly support such a move.
DOT funds small business recovery with recovery funds
August 31st, 2009 | Economic Stimulus Procurement Transportation Uncategorized | Posted by Elise Castelli
I recently reported that the Small Business Administration and the Commerce Department were planning to participate in more than 200 events boost small businesses contracting under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
But it looks like those agencies aren’t the only ones working to ensure small businesses benefit from stimulus spending. The Transportation Department announced today that it has dedicated $20 million in Recovery Act funds to create a “Disadvantaged Business Enterprise Bonding Assistance Program.”
The program, which is run by the department’s Office of Small Disadvantaged Business Utilization, allows small and disadvantaged businesses to apply for reimbursements for the bonding premiums and fees they pay when competing for transportation infrastructure projects, according to a department news release.
The program will help small and disadvantaged businesses better compete for Recovery Act-funded transportation projects by helping them get access to the money they need to participate in government contracting.
“These Recovery dollars will help level the playing field so these companies have the tools and resources they need to compete,” Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said in the news release.
The announcements come just as SBA reported that agencies missed their 23 percent small business spending goal for the third year running. Last year, agencies spent approximately $94 billion, or 21.5 percent, of their contracting dollars through small businesses. The Obama administration said it hoped to reach those goals through improved education and outreach to small businesses and federal agencies.
For those readers who want to know when and where SBA and Commerce are holding or participating in events, I’m told SBA is compiling the list and will post it on the SBA Web site soon.
Tags: SBA, small business