Accountability in Contracting Act tacked onto Supplemental Appropriations bill

Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), gained House passage of his contracting bill but had no companion Senate bill to create a law. So, he used the important-to-our-troops supplemental appropriations bill to get it in position to become a law.

If it stays stapled to this bill, along with the other earmarks used to gain passage in the House of their controversial version, this will become law. All in the name of supporting our soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines.

If only I had a project I wanted to get passed. This looks like the gravy train to put it on. Such are our stakeholders up North in the domed building.

Flunking Subcontracting Limitation is a proposal acceptability issue, not responsibility issue

The Governement Accountability Office sustained (Case B-298364.6; B-298364.7, TYBRIN Corporation, March 13, 2007) the protest of a total small business set aside contract where the apparent winner did not meet the limitations on subcontracting. The Air Force tried twice to get that contractor qualified (note: adding the work actually performed by the contractor with the work of small business subcontractors does not count), eventually getting an SBA Certificate of Competency.

The GAO's response to that was:

[the] Air Force’s determination that [the apparent winner's] proposal failed to comply with a material term of the solicitation (the subcontracting limitation) and, [thus] could not form the basis for award under the RFP, the agency should have found [their] proposal to be unacceptable, rather than finding [them] nonresponsible and forwarding the matter to the SBA for its consideration.

The SBA disagreed. It believes that whether or not a small business contractor will perform the contract is a responsibility issue. However, the GAO's "final" comment is:

the issue here does not concern whether a bidder or offeror can or will comply with the subcontracting limitation requirement during performance of the contract (where we recognize that the matter is one of responsibility) ...but
rather, whether the bidder or offeror has specifically taken exception to the subcontracting limitation requirement on the face of its bid or proposal.
Given that [this] circumstance involves the evaluation of a bid or proposal for compliance with a material term of the solicitation, the determination is one of responsiveness or acceptability, rather than responsibility.

It is simply a matter of the contractor meeting the requirements in the RFP.

Agencies need a plan to validate FPDS-NG data

No kidding! OFPP expects the agencies to come up with a plan to ensure the information in FPDS is accurate and up-to-date. If that happens, all the taskers we normally get should go away and we can get back to the business of buying stuff.

We all need goals and dreams.