Procurement integrity put to the test- 144 years ago

President Ulysses S. Grant received a letter written to warn him about a scrupulous group of businessmen about to pay him an office call. The letter details the bid fixing plan and how the other members of the group would buy-out any other bidders.

He details contracts awarded to the highest (or a long way from lowest) bidder and other shenanigans.

Even (way) back in the "good old days..."

Effective contract administration methods

Much has been said about ensuring contractors properly perform on their contracts during the Iraq War. Check out how they improved contractor performance during the Civil War.

Looking at the big picture of PBSA

The Procurement Round Table is a group of procurement folks who meet to try to make sense of federal contracting and how to make it better. Earlier this year, this group issued a white paper to the acquisition advisory panel, working on improving services acquisition.

The paper introduced the concept of "relational contracting" for discussion purposes. The other purpose of the paper is to help explain why services contracting is supposed to be performance-based but often is performance based in name only.

Looking at the members of the Round Table and the members of the AAP, there is a lot of overlap. Maybe they are just trying to encourage discussion amongst the rest of us.

So...what do you think?

Thanks to Mary Paige for pointing this white paper out to me.

Size does matter- Part II

As an addition to the earlier post regarding small business certification, here is a decision by the Court of Federal Claims where the Air Force required a new certification by the business when they were going to issue a task order to an IDIQ contract.

One of the contactors had been a small business when they won their part of the basic contract. However, now they are a large company. By asking for a certification of business size, the Air Force caused the company to be ineligible for award. The contractor didn't like that and took them to court- and lost.

This is a way to keep small business preferences from being misused. The SBA's rules (see earlier post) are a partial fix.

Contracting officers can ensure small businesses get their preferences by requiring certification each time. It takes little effort on the contractor's part to recertify and keeps the integrity of the preference program intact.

Keep a watchful eye- careful contract administration is still important

Every once in a while, it is good to remember that we are responsible for and entrusted to protect our nation's resources. The best way we can is to create business relationships based on sound, ethical practices.

This website is about those business relationships that contractors and sometimes government employees (there is even a contracting officer listed here) made that were not sound nor ethical.

Come back to this site occasionally to keep in mind the ways that others can commit procurement fraud and erode the trust that the rest of us have been trying to build through our actions day-to-day.

New Acquisition Advisory Panel Report is drafted.

The Acquisition Advisory Panel, formed as a result of the Services Acquisition Reform Act of 2003 (SARA) has put together its draft report. Youmay have seen discussions of it in various places. One such place is Steven Kelman's column in FCW.com. He is starting a series of discussions about the report. This report drew the opposition of panel member Marshall J. Doke.

FYI, other board members are:

• Louis M. Addeo, President, AT&T Government Solutions;
• Frank J. Anderson, Jr., President, Defense Acquisition University;
• Allan V. Burman, President, Jefferson Solutions and former Administrator for Federal Procurement Policy;
• Carl DeMaio, President and Founder of the Performance Institute;
• David Drabkin, Deputy Associate Administrator for Acquisition Policy, General Services Administration;
• Jonathan Etherton, Vice President, Legislative Affairs, Aerospace Industries Association of America, Inc., and former staff member of the Senate Armed Services Committee;
• James A. Hughes, Jr., Deputy General Counsel for Acquisition, Department of the Air Force;
• Deidre A. Lee, Director of Management and Chief Acquisition Officer for the Federal Emergency Management Agency;
• Tom Luedtke, Assistant Administrator for Procurement, National Aeronautics and Space Administration;
• Marcia G. Madsen, Partner, Mayer, Brown, Rowe and Maw, and past Chair of the ABA Section of Public Contract Law;
• Melanie R. Sabelhaus, Deputy Administrator, Small Business Administration;
• Joshua I. Schwartz, Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Government Procurement Law Program, George Washington University Law School;
• Roger D. Waldron, Director, Acquisition Management Center, General Services Administration.
• Laura Auletta, Chairperson of the Civilian Agency Acquisition Council, will serve as the Panel’s Designated Federal Officer (Executive Director).

You are welcome to read the draft and the two columns that pick at the decisions. I think that services acquisition is so important that it rates it's own Aquisition University (DAU is for systems acquisition). Since DoD spends as much on services as systems, it is that important!

The US spends 3 times as much per person on defense as does Europe

This interesting article shows graphically how much the US spends on defense and how much of the world's freedom is shouldered by our country.

To me, the most telling is the statistic that shows that only 4% of Europe's soldiers are deployed throughout the year and that 16% of America's fighting men and women are deployed (some of our troops are deployed to Europe and are included in this total, I presume).

This is who is defending freedom world-wide.

I'd like to say that the rest of the world (England and Australia excepted) should pick up their share of the load, but that never has happened and may never happen.