GSA cuts 197 small businesses from GWAC

The General Services Administration did not renew option years for nearly half of the businesses on a GSA governmentwide acquisition contract set aside solely for 8(a) firms, an agency official confirmed today.

Of the original 416 companies, 197 businesses on the 8(a) Streamlined Technology Acquisition Resources for Services (STARS) GWAC are no longer on the contract, said Mary Parks, GSA’s director of small-business GWACs.

A clause in the contract required companies to reach $100,000 in sales in the contract’s three base years. If a firm missed that mark, GSA would not exercise the contract’s option years, which is what happened with those 197 companies.

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GSA: Oversight will not be outsourced

The General Services Administration wants to offer agencies more contract support services, not overstep bounds by outsourcing oversight, officials said today.

The agency has come under more scrutiny recently by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee because of a proposal critics describe as giving contract oversight to private companies.

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Troublesome contracting trends persist under Bush, report finds

The government’s procurement spending continues to climb, noncompetitive contracts occur more frequently, and waste, fraud and abuse persist throughout the departments, according to a new report from the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

For the first time, annual procurement spending increased to more than $400 billion, with more than half coming from new contracts that were awarded without full and open competition. Furthermore, the total value of wasteful contracts now exceeds $1 trillion, according to the report, titled “More Dollars, Less Sense: Worsening Contracting Trends Under the Bush Administration.”

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GovWorks finds silver lining in DOD limits

The Interior Department’s GovWorks assisted-acquisition services believes its compliance problems with the Defense Department’s major procurement block have strengthened it and even have a silver lining, an official said June 21.

“We have a few targets on our back right now that we’re dealing with, but I can assure you we’ll get through it,” John Nyce, director of the Acquisition Services Directorate at the Interior Department’s National Business Center, said in a speech.

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Encryption BPAs are open to all

A newly opened door for state and local governments to buy from federal contracts signifies improving intergovernmental relations, according to procurement officials who announced 10 precedent-setting blanket purchase agreements last week. The BPAs offer encryption products and services to protect sensitive, unclassified information stored on laptop PCs and mobile computing and removable storage devices.

The Office of Management and Budget joined the Defense Department and the General Services Administration to announce the contracts are open to state and local governments. The BPAs represent the largest federal procurement opportunity to date for state and local agencies, and they create a path for future licensing agreements, said David Wennergren, DOD’s deputy chief information officer.

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Moran: GSA is contracting's short-term fix

The General Services Administration may have good news coming its way.

Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.) said GSA is the short-term fix for an acquisition workforce short on people and expertise. He plans to strongly recommend that language be added to the Defense appropriations bill to guide the Defense Department back to GSA. He said the Appropriations Committee, of which he is a member, will likely approve the recommendation.

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Waxman asks GSA’s Doan to resign

After handing down a no-confidence verdict last week against General Services Administration Administrator Lurita Doan, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) does not appear ready to ease the pressure on Doan or GSA.

Waxman, Oversight and Government Reform Committee chairman, said he has concerns about a new GSA proposal to add oversight responsibilities, such as writing statements of work and evaluating bid proposals, to the Federal Supply Schedule. The proposal would let companies do the type of work that federal employees do now, according to Waxman’s June 14 letter to Doan.

“Outsourcing additional procurement responsibilities could contribute to the erosion of procurement oversight by federal officials, leading to more wasteful spending,” Waxman states in the letter.

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Sade: I learned to love the FAR

Michael Sade faced hardships in his college days. He saw his friends living a better life — with new cars — while he spent his days attending college full time and his nights pumping gas. When he compared his life to that of his friends, he saw no tangible benefits from what he was doing.

“I figured, you know what, I’ve had it. I’m tired of working this hard. And I decided I was either going to go to school full time or go to work full time,” said Sade, who is now the Federal Acquisition Service’s assistant commissioner for acquisition management at the General Services Administration.

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DHS has too many buying chiefs

Having too many chiefs can lead to confusion, which two lawmakers see happening at the Homeland Security Department, despite assurances from DHS that everyone is working with a clear sense of direction.

The lawmakers focused on two chiefs: DHS’ chief procurement officer and its chief acquisition officer, who also is undersecretary for management. The chief procurement officer oversees DHS’ procurement and contracting functions. The chief acquisition officer monitors acquisition performance and programs, making sure acquisitions are legal.

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New contract oversight proposal raises old feelings

A General Services Administration proposal to give contract oversight to private companies could erode the federal government’s role, said Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), and it sounds too similar to previous outsourcing proposals he disliked.

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Denett focuses on FPDS data

Unreliable data about federal contracting hampers efforts to make it more competitive, according to the latest memo from Paul Denett, administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy, who has issued a series of memos to confront the problem.

In the most recent memo, Denett asked the General Services Administration to develop a new series of standard database reports on contract actions documented in GSA’s Federal Procurement Data System.

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Waxman to Doan: It's time to go

The chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee today called for Lurita Doan, the administrator of the General Services Administration, to step down.

During his closing statement at the end of a four-hour hearing into allegations of wrongdoing by the GSA administrator, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) said Doan should choose to resign.

“I would urge you to resign,” Waxman told Doan during a hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which he heads.

The hearing -- the second time Doan has appeared before the committee -- mostly focused on allegations that Doan had violated the Hatch Act, which prohibits using government agencies for partisan political purposes.

Doan defended herself, emphatically denying that she sought ramifications against any GSA employees who may have testified regarding the allegations.

Meanwhile, the committee’s ranking Republican, Rep. Tom Davis (Va.), said it has beaten a dead horse in calling Doan in again. The issue lacks substance compared with the other issues, such as information security, needing the committee’s attention, he said.

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Waxman vows more oversight on procurement

Although he stopped short of calling the federal procurement system broken, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) said today the system is inaccurate and unhelpful. Waxman blamed the former Republican-led Congress for neglecting oversight.

Waxman, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, vowed to have that panel review contracting regulations

“We have seen a dramatic increase in procurement contracts in the government in all areas,” Waxman said in a speech at the Security Industry Association's 2007 Government Summit in Washington. But, he said, “a strong part of the ideology of this [the Bush] administration is to contract out.”

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DOD cuts back on orders with GovWorks

The Defense Department’s decision to stop using GovWorks for transactions of more than $100,000 could have a crippling effect on business at the Interior Department’s assisted-acquisition services center. DOD last week suspended indefinitely its use of GovWorks for large procurements after an inspector general reported continued problems in following procurement rules.

The suspension is the latest move by DOD after a series of audits found widespread procurement rule violations among several agencies that provide governmentwide assisted-acquisition services.

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Senator wants answers about GSA, Sun deal

Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) wants to know how much money, if any, the government has saved or lost under its contract with Sun Microsystems, and he has asked General Services Administration Inspector General Brian Miller to check it out now.

A hotline complaint alleged that Sun overcharged the government in 2004 for products and services on GSA’ multiple-award schedules, Miller told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee March 28. As a result, the company’s contract with GSA was extended but not renewed while the IG looked into the matter. Investigations have ensued to determine if GSA Administrator Lurita Doan intervened in negotiations to keep the company on GSA’s schedules.

“If the government is getting a fair deal, then I want to know it,” Grassley wrote in a June 5 letter to Miller. “If not, then Congress needs to understand the full scope of the problem.”

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IG pushes SBA on data accuracy

Small Business Administration officials and the SBA Office of Inspector General’s auditors may be at odds over getting contract information entered correctly into a database.

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Preston: Small-biz contracting goal will be tougher to meet

RICHMOND, Va. — A new rule requiring small businesses to recertify their size regularly may hinder agencies’ current goal of awarding 23 percent of contracting dollars to small businesses, a Small Business Administration official said June 4.

The changes will make it harder for agencies to meet the 23 percent goal, SBA Administrator Steven Preston said in a speech at the Management of Change conference. He is, therefore, against increasing the small-business goal to 30 percent, he added.

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Doan's attorney: OSC's report off the mark, unfair

A report by the Office of Special Counsel that states Lurita Doan, administrator of the General Services Administration, violated the Hatch Act is far off the mark and unfair and needs to be disregarded, her attorney, Michael Nardotti, wrote in a letter to OSC.

He also wrote that Special Counsel Scott Bloch prepared a premature and prejudicial provision of the draft and final reports, which were leaked to the media.

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Sade: Be mentors

Contracting officials nearing retirement should get a lighter workload so they can share their procurement know-how with younger employees, said a senior procurement official who is concerned about losing federal acquisition expertise.

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