Treasury cancels TCE procurement

The Treasury Department has decided to cancel its controversial Treasury Communications Enterprise (TCE) contract, and will instead use the General Services Administration’s Networx contract, agency officials confirmed.

“The department believes where we stand today, Networx makes the most sense for the taxpayer and the department when considered over the 10 year contract period,” said Treasury spokeswoman Eileen Gilligan. Networx meets our needs, she said.

The decision marks a significant turn for the agency that had resisted many calls to use the Networx contract, which is slated to be awarded next year and is a governmentwide contract vehicle.

The move also comes as Ira Hobbs, Treasury’s chief information officer, is set to retire early next year.

This is the latest turn in the history of TCE, which often has been at the center of controversy. A Treasury Inspector General audit in February found TCE deficient. In 2005, Treasury officials ended the TCE procurement, terminating the deal with AT&T and pledging to use GSA contracts, only to reverse their decision several months later.

Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.), chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, was one of the most vocal opponents of TCE. He even warned that he would seek to eliminate funding for the Treasury telecommunications system. Davis has said he favors a governmentwide approach to issues such as network telecom rather than allowing individual agencies to manage it on their own.

“He's extremely pleased, not just because reason has finally prevailed and there's now consensus behind the approach he's been pushing for years,” said Davis spokesman Dave Marin. "But more importantly because this is a win for good government, for all those who care about getting the biggest bang for the taxpayers buck."

GSA Administrator Lurita Doan has argued that TCE made it more difficult for GSA to get the best prices on its Networx contract.

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SEWP stays with NASA; Doan upset by decision

The Office of Federal Procurement Policy has cleared NASA to proceed with the next installment of its multibillion-dollar Scientific and Engineering Workstation Procurement, which the General Services Administration had hoped to take over.

SEWP IV will have a five-year duration and a ceiling of $6 billion, according to the Office of Management and Budget. Under the new designation, SEWP IV will provide online tools and training to provide for agencies’ high-end solutions.

“NASA effectively leverages its in-house technical knowledge and management experience to provide the federal scientific community with timely access to the high-end IT product solutions they need at competitive prices and reasonable fees,” said OFPP administrator Paul Denett in a press release.

NASA has served as executive agent of SEWP since 1992. It currently manages the SEWP III governmentwide acquisition contract, which expires in January.

Lurita Doan, administrator of the General Services Administration, is disappointed with Denett’s decision, she said in a statement Tuesday.

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OFPP's Denett: Competition works

Where some market observers see an overabundance of governmentwide acquisition contracts, the government's top procurement official sees market forces at work.

“I don’t see a proliferation of GWACs themselves,” said Paul Denett, administrator for the Office of Federal Procurement Policy, in an interview Tuesday. Instead, he describes it as strategic, niche contracts that fill needs in the marketplace.

Denett approved NASA’s Scientific and Engineering Workstation Procurement IV GWAC Monday. In a letter to NASA Administrator Michael Griffin, Denett wrote that NASA had shown a need for SEWP IV in the federal marketplace and that NASA has the expertise to lead it.

Competition is the bedrock for the federal marketplace, Denett said. “Some competition is beneficial. It keeps people paying attention to their customers.”

Too much competition could be counterproductive, he added.

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Six months into the Lurita Doan era

Lurita Doan, administrator of the General Services Administration, offered a bleak description of the agency’s condition in June, the month she began her new job at GSA.

“When I came onboard, GSA had experienced one of its worst years in its 58-year history,” Doan said. “Our customers were leaving, our budget was a mess, we flunked our audit, our morale was at an all-time low, and our annual revenues had plunged $4.5 billion.”

Since then, conditions at the agency have improved, by her own account. “That’s because we have had the courage at GSA to face our most pressing problems,” Doan said. GSA received a clean audit in November, and a reorganization of the agency is progressing.

However, Doan has not had an extended honeymoon in her first six months.

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Agreement may smooth GSA, DOD relationship

The important relationship between the General Services Administration and its biggest customer, the Defense Department, may improve with a new memorandum of agreement that smoothes out more than 20 problem areas dividing the pair.

The agreement, the first between the two agencies, defines some ambiguous aspects of existing acquisition policy regarding interagency contracting. It also clearly establishes responsibility and clarifies rules applying to acquisitions conducted on DOD’s behalf. Overall, the agreement focuses on numerous aspects of an acquisition, from identifying requirements until the contract closes, according to the agreement.

“This [agreement] sends a strong signal of each agency’s intent to work closely with one another,” said David Bibb, GSA’s deputy administrator.

The agreement sets specific dates and deadlines for GSA and DOD in the coming year.

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OMB score card neglects citizens, report states

The Executive Branch Management Score Card that measures the use of e-government in agencies neglects citizen input, according to a new report.

The Office of Management and Budget scores agencies quarterly on how well they are instituting the President's Management Agenda, but the scoring leaves goals related to citizens untracked, said Jenny Whitmer, senior research analyst at Government Insights, an IDC company, and author of the report, “Citizen-Centered eGovernment Needs Performance Measures for Success.”

OMB needs to measure citizen satisfaction or possibly risk ignoring the citizen-centered aspect of the initiative as agencies push to match the agenda’s performance metrics, according to the report, which was released today.

“For all the emphasis the [agenda] admirably puts on leveraging [e-government] to strengthen government’s citizen service, the OMB score card exhibits a serious deficiency in actually taking that initiative,” Whitmer wrote.

OMB’s score card evaluates agencies in five areas of the agenda: workforce, competitive sourcing, financial performance, budget and performance integration, and e-government. In the fourth quarter of fiscal 2006, eight agencies earned red scores in e-government, 10 earned yellow and eight green.

The report recommends that OMB's scoring criteria add citizen satisfaction metrics from focus groups, surveys and polls. Several groups, such as the University of Michigan’s quarterly American Customer Satisfaction Index, already gauge what citizens think about e-government.

Whitmer also suggests comparing federal agencies in the U.S. to other governments. The United Nations, for instance, tracks the progress of e-government worldwide. Canada, Australia and New Zealand have well-developed methods to assess citizen feedback on their e-government initiatives, Whitmer wrote.

OMB influences agencies’ behavior with the score card, Whitmer said.

“For better or worse, performance measures drive the direction of an organization’s efforts,” she said. When performance measures get so much attention from agencies, their effect is not trivial, she wrote in the report.

Current metrics focus on enterprise architecture, information technology investments with good business cases, investment planning under earned value management analysis, secured IT systems and the inspector general’s rating of secured systems, and agencies' use of e-government.

“This administration’s goal is to champion citizen-centered electronic government that will result in a major improvement in the federal government’s value to the citizen,” the agenda’s introductory report from fiscal 2002 states.

Agencies are feeling the pressure to incorporate the agenda into their organizations, Whitmer wrote. To meet the administration’s citizen-centered objective, “a comparison of the goals and the performance measures used to track them suggests a mismatch,” the report states.

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Lawmakers demand answers from Doan on proposed IG cut

Congress is upset about the General Services Administration’s proposals to cut its inspector general’s budget and send auditing duties to private companies, and lawmakers are letting GSA Administrator Lurita Doan know it. Several lawmakers have denounced the proposals and want explanations.

Disappointed senators sent Doan a letter today wanting to know her reasons for the proposals, and three Democrats on the House Government Reform Committee — including incoming Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) — requested Dec. 5 that Doan cancel her decision to move pre-award audits to the private sector.
Doan is “tampering with a system that works well, all to alleviate the ‘stress’ of corporations that have attempted to overcharge the taxpayer,” the representatives wrote.

On Oct. 19, Doan announced she would move oversight to small 8(a) audit firms. One of her goals for 2007 is to balance the role of the IG because firms have concerns about the office’s oversight.

“Our contracting personnel spend so much time responding to the IG, and there is a certain ‘fear factor’ that enters into that,” she said. She questioned how many pre-award audits are needed. If GSA and the IG conduct audits, Doan said it would waste money because the IG uses appropriated funds.

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Companies focus wares on IPv6 transition

Small and midsize companies have jumped into the IPv6 market to help agencies understand and prepare for a fundamental shift to the new protocol. Although procurement officials are looking ahead two years to assess their critical expenses related to IPv6, vendors must be ready now, market experts say.

“It’s ripe right now to get with the right person who will be the IPv6 transition manager and just solicit and say, ‘Hey, we’re here to help,’ ” said Peter Tseronis, director of network services at the Education Department and co-chairman of the CIO Council’s IPv6 Working Group.

Agencies are hunting for that killer application to ease their transition to the new IP, Tseronis said.

The Office of Management and Budget issued a memo Aug. 2, 2005, mandating agencies to move to IPv6. The directive requires agencies to build IPv6 network backbones by June 30, 2008. IPv6 increases address space, promotes flexibility and functionality, and enhances security.

Businesses have recognized the growing market spawned by OMB’s IPv6 mandate and are creating products and services with an eye on the transition deadline, which is only 19 months away.

The potential federal market is big. “It’s tens of millions of dollars over the next couple of years for us,” said Bruce Sinclair, president and chief executive officer of IPv6 solutions provider Hexago.

In a recent Juniper Networks survey, 67 percent of nearly 300 industry leaders said the mandated transition is accelerating the pace of developing IPv6-capable products and services. But a Cisco Systems survey in June found that less than 8 percent of the 200 defense and civilian IPv6 decision-makers surveyed said their agencies had completed their transition plans.

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Lawmakers urged to consider expanded mandate for e-filing

The Internal Revenue Service could sharply reduce its tax processing costs if paid tax preparers had to file returns electronically. But not all of them would welcome such a mandate, tax industry observers say.

The Government Accountability Office has recommended that lawmakers require paid tax preparers to file their clients’ tax returns electronically. If they electronically filed 90 percent of those returns, the government would save about $68 million a year on tax processing, according to a report GAO released in November. The “IRS is missing an opportunity to generate additional savings,” wrote GAO.

Cindy Hockenberry, a tax information analyst at the National Association of Tax Professionals, said she recognizes the benefits of mandatory e-filing, which include more accurate tax returns and faster tax refunds.

But she added that commercial tax preparers worry that the cost of upgrading their computer systems and business processes for e-filing would lower their profits and be too time-consuming.

To become authorized providers, tax preparers would need to submit formal applications and undergo fingerprint and background checks. “That’s a lot of hoops to jump through,” Hockenberry said.

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