2011 Budget protects feds, tightens contracting
February 1st, 2010 | 2011 Budget Procurement | Posted by Elise Castelli
Federal employees worried that their jobs will be outsourced to the private sector can rest easy for another year. The 2011 budget proposal continues a governmentwide moratorium on public-private competitions for federal work.
But contractors may face further insourcing under the proposal. While blocking agencies from competing federal work, the budget’s “general provisions” section requires agencies to take a head count of all contractor employees performing services for the government. The so-called “service contract inventory” must also include the name of the vendor, the type of service provided and the cost of that service.
Businesses may also see fewer federal contracts on the street in fiscal 2011 as the White House renewed its call for agencies to meet the $40 billion contract savings target by the end of that year. To meet this savings goal, the White House encouraged agencies to buy in bulk.
Tags: A-76, contracting, insourcing, outsourcing, strategic sourcing
Postal update: General counsel finds no contracting violations
January 12th, 2010 | Postal Service | Posted by Stephen Losey
Here’s an update on Monday’s story on U.S. Postal Service executive Robert Bernstock and the three sole-source contracts he awarded to people he worked with in the private sector: Agency spokesman Gerry McKiernan said yesterday that the Postal Service’s general counsel, Mary Anne Gibbons has finished reviewing the contracts and “determined that the procurement process was followed in securing these contracts.”
Gibbons began reviewing the contracts last week in response to Federal Times inquiries.
Tags: contracting, Robert Bernstock, sole-source
House passes DOD authorization bill
June 25th, 2009 | Congress Defense | Posted by Elise Castelli
The House passed the 2010 National Defense Authorization Act in a 389-22 vote today.
The House version of the bill would suspend the use of public-private competitions for federal jobs for three years, end the department’s pay-for-performance system and direct new contracting reforms.
Tags: contracting, Defense Authorization, NSPS, outsourcing
Penny Pinching, Government Style
May 7th, 2009 | 2010 Budget Procurement | Posted by Elise Castelli
My colleague Gregg Carlstrom already highlighted the budget cuts that the White House said will lead to $17 billion in savings in 2010. But I wanted to highlight a few items tucked into that figure that represent savings that came not from cuts, but from better contract management.
Among the items dubbed “other savings” in the White House’s “Terminations, Reductions and Savings” report released today:
- The Environmental Protection Agency’s consolidation of 22 information technology contracts for desktop support saved the agency $2 million. The new, single contract centralized help desk support, provided more energy efficient equipment and improved security.
- The Education Department achieved $8 million in savings last year by reducing the numbers of computers and printers it leases. Computers were reduced to 1,400, or about one per user from an average of 1.5 per user. More significantly, Education implemented a new network printer strategy that reduces the number of printers from 5,000 to 1,300, serving 10 people per printer and saving ink and paper. Going forward these efforts will save Education 7 percent to 10 percent annually on its contractor-owned and operated computer network.Â
- The Homeland Security Department will save up to $59 million annually over the next five years through consolidated purchasing of office supplies and computer software, which leverages the departments buying power to obtain bulk purchasing discounts.
- The State Department will also save 7 percent to 10 percent on office supplies, furniture, medical supplies, cell phones, personal digital assistants and other commodities by consolidating purchases under one vendor to take advantage of volume discounts. The White House report did not an exact dollar amount for the department’s savings.
Relatively speaking, these savings are small. But as Benjamin Franklin once said, “A penny saved is a penny earned.”
Tags: budget cuts, contracting, strategic sourcing
Obama to order major contracting reforms today
March 4th, 2009 | OMB Procurement White House | Posted by Elise Castelli
Update,10:40 a.m.: The President has made the big contracting reform announcement.
He called the government’s contracting system “broken” and said it was “plagued by massive cost overruns and outright fraud.”
He added:
We need more competition for contracts and more oversight when they’re carried out.
Ending the “unnecessary” use of sole-source and cost-based contracts, ensuring that government work isn’t improperly outsourced and opening more contracts to small businesses will save the government $40 billion of the $500 billion spent on contracts annually by increasing competition and reducing waste, he said.
These estimated cost savings are part of the $2 trillion in cuts in announced in last week’s budget.
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Stimulus will require competitive bidding
February 6th, 2009 | Congress Economic Stimulus | Posted by Rebecca Neal
The Senate, in what feels like its 7,000 hour of voting on amendments to the stimulus bill, just approved requiring competitive bidding for federal contracts.
The amendment, introduced by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., passed 97-0 Friday afternoon, a monumental show of support from both Republicans and Democrats who have been concerned about oversight of the stimulus.
The amendment to the Senate version of the bill will require “all contracts, grants and cooperative agreements awarded under this act to be competitively bid.”
Sen. Mike Johanns, R-Neb., said such an amendment is critical to ensuring money is responsibly spent.
The temptation to ignore the transparency of the bidding process will be too great to ignore unless we act,” he said.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., thinks he can reach the required 60 votes Friday to pass the stimulus bill. If debate continues too late today, he said he will invoke cloture, forcing a Sunday vote on the bill.
Tags: Congress, contracting, stimulus
A flock of talon-ted contractors
November 3rd, 2008 | Defense Procurement | Posted by Elise Castelli
The Air Force is looking to employ some live birds–falcons to be precise– to protect its metal ones, the Washington Post reported today. The enemy: other birds.
Apparently, small birds, like songbirds, pigeons or Magpies, fly in the vicinity of U.S. military aircraft at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, posing a hazard that they’ll be ingested in the planes’ engines and disable them. The Post reports 125 “bird strikes” in the last year, up from 78 the year before. So far, other traditional means of bird control, such as firing shotguns, have not worked.
If the military awards the contract, it won’t be the first time that a government agency has hired animals to help it solve a problem. In August, we reported about a herd of goats that the National Park Service employed to help with a poison ivy problem at a New York park.
Tags: animals, contracting
The SBA scores will come out tomorrow…
October 21st, 2008 | Agencies Procurement | Posted by Elise Castelli
Bet your bottom dollar that the Small Business Administration’s second annual report card on the government’s use of small businesses in procurement will come out tomorrow. We say this because we’ve been told there is a press conference on that very topic, so it’s a pretty safe bet.
The report cards grade agencies on how well they’ve met their individual goals for contracting with small businesses. These goals are often above and beyond the governmentwide goal of 23 percent, which is set by statute. Last year, SBA reported 12 agencies got red scores indicating they failed to reach their goals for fiscal 2006. We’ll see if anyone has done better in fiscal 2007.
The scorecards will come out along side the fiscal 2007 “Small Business Goaling Report,” which show whether the government reached its 23 percent small business contracting goal. No surprises expected there as we already know they missed it by a slim margin. Calvin Jenkins, SBA’s deputy associate administrator for government contracting, told us so in July.
Check federaltimes.com tomorrow afternoon for a complete story on all the results.
Tags: contracting, SBA