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.

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. 
• 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.”

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.

AP reported that the memo would “change how contracts are awarded and who can earn them, a move his aides say would save taxpayers about $40 billion a year by making the process more competitive.”

According to AP, the memo is expected to:

• Halt the outsourcing of federal employee jobs through public-private competitions.
• Open more contracts to small businesses.
• Eliminate “unnecessary” sole-source contracts.

Stay tuned to FederalTimes.com. We’ll bring you more as this story develops.

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.

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.

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.