On the lighter side: Its Phantom Flu and other rare disease season

Just thought you'd like to read how some people get time off to do their personal business during the middle of the day.

Read and enjoy...

Looking for federal case law to back up your "hunch?"

Here is a great website find federal court decisions. Featuring Supreme Court, Courts of Appeal and others, if you need to find it, it seems to be here.

Good luck on your search for answers.

Acquisition schools standardize coursework

Standardizing the curriculums of both the Federal Acquisition Institute (FAI) and Defense Acquisition University (DAU) are will result in a common level of training across the federal government. In the past, for non-DoD contracting officers to move to DoD jobs, they often had to go through more scrutiny. DoD contracting folks going to other agencies were welcomed with open arms.

Now, maybe there won't be an "us versus them" mentality when hiring federal contracting professionals.

Interagency contracts once again fail procurement regulation test

Both the Department of Defense Inspector General (IG) and Department of Interior IG office issued a report this month detailing the work accomplished by DOI on behalf of DoD. The reports detailed the shortcomings of the GovWorks office in Northern Virginia and the Southwest Acquisition Branch located at Fort Huachucha, AZ. Some of the findings include lack of competition and lack of documentation regarding the price reasonableness of the awarded contracts.

There is also a big issue regarding use of expried funds. There were almost $400 million in "potentially expired" funds parked at the GovWorks office.

Like previous interagency contract reports recently handed down, the DoDIG keeps bandying around the bona fide need rule. As if anyone pays attention to that- at least outside of contracting.

For more, check out the report. Also, the DoD IG site and the DOI IG website are good places to find reports related to contracting.

Modernization, force protection and the environment also get House attention.

This post wraps up our review of The Oversight Plan of the House Armed Services Committee for the 110th Congress. Looking at Congressional oversight plans can give us insights into procurement issues for the coming year.

Military Modernization
The committees seeks to ensure that that the

highest priority requirements of the nation’s active, guard and reserve land,
sea, and air forces are properly resourced.

Force Protection
The HASC plans to pay significant attention to personnel body armor, tactical wheeled vehicle armor protection and countermeasures to improvised explosive devices (IED) in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In something that should be a good thing for our community, the committee will explore innovative acquisition policies and procedures in an effort to provide sufficient flexibility in support of:

• requirement identification [more requirement focus],
• research and development,
• immediate procurement, and
• rapid operational testing and fielding of additional capabilities.

Environmental Programs
Directly impacting installations and installation contracting, the committee will significantly increase its oversight of the Department and military services’ environmental management. Perhaps the increased emphasis is directly due to the new composition of the committee (and Congress).

Cost growth in weapons systems gets HASC laser vision

More on the priorities of the current House Armed Services Committee.

A recurring issue throughout their Oversight Plan is controlling costs. So it comes as no surprise that they plan to conduct hearings and briefings to look at how weapons systems procurements get out of hand. They believe that the causes of cost growth, schedule delays, and/or performance degradation from envisioned capabilities include:

• too many programs competing for too few resources;
• requirements determination, definition, and growth [second notice that requirements determination is a focus];
• failures of cost estimation;
• unrealistic program schedules related to immature technology and insufficient funding;
• instability in funding profiles;
• labor and material cost increases; and
• management shortfalls.

That is an ambitious goal. It seems that the operational side of this process- those of us who are "in the field"- have long known that requirement generation is an issues that needs addressed. Perhaps Congressional attention to it in the weapon systems arena may bring changes all the way to the supplies and services contracting done at local installations around the world.

Acquisition issues come into the view of the HASC

Continuing our look at the priorities of the House Armed Services Committee for the 110th Congress...

There are many issues that the committee could have chosen in the area of Department of Defense procurement/acquisition. Here is what they are going to pay most attention to.

In their role of oversight and management, the committee intends to pay particular attention to the Acquisition System and Acquisition Policy. They plan to:

• Oversee “…the defense acquisition system and address growing concerns about cost growth [Note this area] in major defense acquisition programs and the responsiveness of the system to compelling military needs.”
• Examine in depth [my emphasis] the "military requirements process [Note this area, too- you will see it again]… (that) continues to produce outcomes which do not reflect the jointness that the military has achieved at the operating level.”
• Monitor revisions to laws concerning the reporting of cost growth [Here it is again] in weapons systems, controlling the government’s interest in technical data rights, and governing the management structure for contracting for services to recommend further revisions where necessary.
• Continue to push for accountability and integrity in contracting with the Panel on Contracting Integrity and working in part through the reconstituted Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, to identify and eliminate as many contracting vulnerabilities as possible (my emphasis).

Cost growth and requirements generation are certainly areas of concern to the committee.

In addition to acquisition policy, the committee wants to improve the Defense Industrial Base and Technology Transfers. They plan to:

• Give close examination to the health of the defense industrial base and those suppliers (which) appear to be struggling to generate profit margins large enough to justify long-term investments in infrastructure and technology. These long-term investments are vital to the health of the defense industrial base.

[Helping companies that are struggling with profit margins and controlling cost growth seem to be conflicting goals and should bear watching.]

• Examine the effects of mergers, acquisitions, and consolidation of second and third tier suppliers on competition and “the extent to which contractors may be taking on management roles previously performed by the government.
• Continue to review issues surrounding contractors on the battlefield and the outsourcing of inherently governmental operational functions.

[Here is another look at how the "contractorization" of government is being examined.]

The HASC focus on financial/resource management will include examining the “causes of the DOD’s inability to consolidate its financial information and monitor closely the … dollars being spent on business systems modernization programs … proposed to address [DoD’s] financial management problems.”

HASC looks at military readiness and civilian personnel

Focusing on the readiness of military forces, the House Armed Services Committee plans to

• Increase their oversight in the “service’s readiness programs to ensure that military units possess the required resources and training to complete their assigned full-spectrum combat mission.”
• Conduct “vigorous oversight [my emphasis] of all of the Department of Defense’s (DOD) readiness plans and programs to ensure military units are fully trained and equipped for combat.”

Such emphasis on readiness is important as we continue an extended war on terrorism and other actions around the globe. For us in the procurement community, that is welcome news.

Since many of us are government employees, it is helpful to learn of the approach the committee intends to take toward civilian personnel. The committee plans to:

• Significantly increase oversight of civilian personnel pay and policies…(paying) close attention to implementation of the pay for performance system, and developments with the DOD attempt to modify the collective bargaining and employee appeal rights portions of NSPS.
• “…increase its oversight of the Department's use of authorities such as A-76 to contract out DOD activities... and will closely examine the cost-benefit analyses of the existing and future contracting out of functions done by DOD employees or military members.”

A close look as NSPS was not unanticipated, regardless who had won in November. However, I suspect the closer scrutiny of the collective bargaining provisions of NSPS is a result of the new members of Congress.

Some in government have said that the A-76 process may have gone too far. This is against what the President's direction has been during thepast 6 years. Perhaps it is due a closer look.

House Armed Services Committee sets their priorities

The new Congress has begun its work, releasing its priorities for federal procurement. As I become aware of them, I will try to help you follow them here. Thanks to Debbie Emerson for passing this one on to me.

The House Armed Services Committee (HASC) has issued their Oversight Plan for the 110th Congress (current session). If you are not aware, this committee has oversight over the entire Department of Defense and its activities, so is particularly important to us in DoD procurement. In addition, the House of Representatives is responsible for all appropriations legislation, so the findings and priorities of this committee find their way to funding bills.

They have oversight over everything DoD, but this influential group plans specific focus areas for this coming year. This topic will be examined in several posts today to break up the topic and perhaps improve the discussion.

DoD IG says requiring activity should justify cost of going to non-DoD contract

The acting DoD IG, Thomas Gimble, appeared before the Senate Armed Services Readiness and Management Sub-committee last week. He listed a lot of reasons that DoD program officials (he really didn't blame DoD contracting folks) went to non-DoD contracts. Among the reasons are:

the non-DoD agency processed the purchases faster than DoD and they could generally get the contractor they wanted

He went on to say that by going to non-DoD contracts, contracting and funding issues were a big problem. Contracting problems such as insufficient competition, failure to determine price fairness and reasonableness, and inadequate contract surveillance. The biggest funding issue is that GSA and Department of Interior helped DoD "park" money that was expiring. According to the report,

Most of the contracting and funding problems were driven by three factors: the desire to hire a particular contractor, the desire to obligate expiring funds, and the inability of the DoD contracting workforce to timely respond to its customers.

Finally, the IG said that DoD requiring activities spent $23 million in surcharges to GSA and DOI for

for purchases that could have been routinely handled by junior DoD contracting personnel. DoD often paid surcharges for GSA and the Department of the Interior to purchase low-cost military equipment or commercial items that could have been obtained from existing DoD contracts.

Finally, the report recognized that the requiring activity shouldered much of the responsibility for correcting this. It also says that when the requirement was initiated, the requiring activity

...did not determine whether it was in DoD’s best interest to make the purchase through a DoD contracting office or pay a 2 to 5 percent fee for assistance from a non-DoD agency.