What is inherently governmental?

It’s been more than 40 years since the government defined what an inherently governmental job is. Although federal agencies conduct reviews each year to identify functions the private sector could perform, some officials say it is increasingly difficult to draw a line between the responsibilities of federal employees and those of private contractors. Others have expressed concern that contractors are performing inherently governmental functions.

The definition of that term has taken on new significance as the government struggles to maintain an adequate acquisition workforce. David Walker, comptroller general and head of the Government Accountability Office, said it’s time to reconsider what “inherently governmental” means.

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SBA proposes changes to determining companies' size

A small business’ size may soon be calculated by a three-year average number of employees instead of an annual average, as the government tries to ease burdens on itself and the companies, the Small Business Administration announced today.

SBA proposed to change the period for computing the average number of employees from the current method, which uses a rolling average over the preceding 12 months. The agency wants to switch to an average in the past three completed calendar years, according to a Federal Register notice published today.

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GSA goes to Eagle Eye for contract, grant data

The General Services Administration intends to issue a sole-sourcing purchase order to Eagle Eye Publishers for custom programming services as the agency works to put federal contract and grant information into an easily searchable public database.

GSA wants advice on developing the database and getting analyzed sets of the information from fiscal 2000 to 2007 and updates in 2008, according to a Federal Business Opportunities notice posted July 25.

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Grassley asks Sun to give contract info to GSA IG

Sun Microsystems is not cooperating with the General Services Administration Inspector General Office as it attempts to conduct an audit on its government contract that Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) requested in June, Grassley said.

In a July 24 letter to Scott McNealy, Sun’s chairman, Grassley asked the company to immediately comply with its contract with GSA and give the IG the requested information. Grassley wrote that he was surprised to find that Sun indicated to GSA that it does not have to report the requested data under the contract’s terms.

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Converging security needs create new market for GSA

A growing federal market for separate but related security demands has led the General Services Administration to concoct ways to offer the wide-ranging requirements in a single package.

To minimize vulnerabilities, agencies are rethinking their purchasing strategies and starting a new trend in buying security services. Their different security features, such as cameras, security guards and information technology platforms, need to interact. For example, security guard services and IT need to be on the same playing field.

Attempting to order and then connect these services as one is called security convergence.

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Many feds decide to stick around

John Nyce could have retired two years ago after working 30 years in federal acquisition. Instead, he became director of the Acquisition Services Directorate at the Interior Department’s National Business Center.

“I’m not ready to retire. I’ve got more things to do,” Nyce said.

Nyce’s decision to stick around after 30 years is not unusual. A majority of federal acquisition employees eligible to retire aren’t retiring, according to the Federal Acquisition Institute’s “Annual Report on the Federal Acquisition Workforce.” FAI found that in fiscal 2006, 83 percent of contracting officers eligible to retire had not done so. That reflects a trend that began in 2000. Since then, the percentage of contracting officers who have eschewed retirement has hovered between 81 percent and 84 percent.

Despite that trend, agency leaders remain concerned that a large retirement wave could decimate the federal acquisition community.

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SBA: Tech can help small-biz set-aside record

When members of the Senate’s Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee expressed frustration with agencies’ failure to send the required percentage of contracting dollars to small and disadvantaged businesses, a Small Business Administration official said technology can help address the problem.

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Walker: Redefine 'inherently governmental'

The definition of an inherently governmental function needs a re-examination because public employees and private-sector contractors are almost indistinguishable, U.S. Comptroller General David Walker told a Senate committee Tuesday.

“We need to look at when and under what circumstances is it appropriate to be contracting and when is it not, because we are in a very different situation today, and we’re likely to continue to have to rely on contractors…to accomplish the government’s mission,” he told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

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GSA: We'll change to black

The General Services Administration is looking at all options for overhauling its slumping assisted acquisition services business. GSA officials said they intend to bring business costs in line with revenue by October, the start of the new fiscal year.

“Expect to see changes in our business models,” said Lurita Doan, GSA administrator, in a statement to Federal Computer Week. “Our fees and fee structures, our workforce, and our systems may all be affected as we work hard to improve GSA acquisition service offerings.”

GSA is taking those steps because it expects its assisted acquisition services business to be $60 million in the red in fiscal 2007, based on $3.7 billion in expected revenue of which GSA’s average fee is 4 percent.

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8(a) small businesses take a tumble

Richard Rea, president of the telecommunications and information technology company R Rea, was one of 197 small-business owners whose companies the General Services Administration delisted in June from a governmentwide acquisition contract for minority-owned small businesses. Like the 196 other companies, R Rea did not reach a mandatory $100,000 sales benchmark during the contract’s three-year base period.

Despite extensive marketing efforts by the companies and GSA, which administers the contract, agencies were slow to use the Streamlined Technology Acquisition Resources for Services (STARS) GWAC, leaving many small businesses below the sales threshold and soon without a spot on the contract.

Rea chalked up his loss to agencies’ habit of seeking out larger companies for IT and telecom work and using the same contracts rather than branching out, even if it means getting a better deal. “That’s a mystery to me,” Rea said.

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Official: Vets getting more contracts but not enough

Fiscal 2006 contracting data shows that agencies have sent more contracting dollars to service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses than in past years, but they’re still falling short of the mark, an SBA official told a House subcommittee July 12.

“The preliminary data suggests significant efforts toward an improvement in achieving the 3 percent goal,” said William Elmore, associate administrator of the Small Business Administration’s Office of Veterans Business Development. “It also demonstrates the increasing ability of [service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses] in pursuing contracting opportunities and in securing contracts.”

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Denett: Award contracts to vet-owned businesses

Paul Denett, administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy, said driving government contracts to veteran-owned small businesses is one of his priorities and should be a priority of agencies as well.

Denett urged agencies in a July 10 memo to review their information technology requirements and check the General Services Administration’s Veterans Technology Services Governmentwide Acquisition Contract for available services.

“The success of the VETS GWAC depends on strong agency participation,” he wrote.

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Hands-off approach helps e-commerce flourish, panel says

A decade after President Clinton announced the Framework for Global Electronic Commerce, e-commerce has exploded, and a major reason for its success is the government’s hands-off approach to regulating it, a panel said today.

E-commerce has flourished from the outset because it does not face taxing, heavy regulations and a Federal Communications Commission-like board that controls content, said Ira Magaziner, the primary author of the e-commerce framework.

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Presidential hopefuls unfair to contractors, group says

Government contractors want to avoid being caught in a crossfire during the 2008 presidential race, but candidates are already taking shots at them.

The Contract Services Association charges in a statement issued today that Sens. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Barack Obama (D-Ill.) have been inaccurate and misleading in their campaign rhetoric about government contractors.

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OFPP tells agencies: Be prepared

What would happen if half of your agency’s workforce called in sick because of a viral outbreak? What if the crisis lasted for weeks? Paul Denett, administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy, recently posed those questions to a roomful of federal contracting officers.

The questions were relevant because a new government report reveals that federal and state governments are unprepared for an outbreak of avian flu.

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Report: Congress needs to take charge of DOD procurement policy

Congress needs to take a stand before the Defense Department sets a new procurement precedent and moves away from a decades-old policy of paying for a project with one fiscal year’s appropriations. But the question for Congress is how to do that, according to a new Congressional Research Service report.

Current policy requires DOD to fund a weapon or piece of equipment in the year in which the item is bought. The full-funding policy is a budgeting rule that has been applied to DOD procurement programs since the 1950s, according to the CRS report released June 15 by the Federation of American Scientists.

Ronald O’Rourke and Stephen Daggett, national defense specialists in CRS’ Foreign Affairs, Defense and Trade Division, wrote in the report that despite being a technical rule, the policy deals with Congress’ budget power and oversight of DOD.

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SBA targets small-biz mergers

A new recertification rule will remove large corporations listed as small businesses from the government’s database within a year, the Small Business Administration said today.

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Got a complaint? File it online

The Office of Special Counsel, a small, independent investigative agency, wants to make filing complaints as easy as filing taxes online.

“The user should have a similar experience to using a product such as TurboTax, which walks the user through a series of screens until all the desired information is captured,” according to OSC’s Federal Business Opportunities notice published June 27.

OSC investigates claims of prohibited personnel practices and other violations of the federal merit system. The agency has received a lot of attention lately because of a leak to the media of a report finding General Services Administration Administrator Lurita Doan had violated the Hatch Act.

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DOD time-and-materials contracts raise red flag for GAO

Defense agencies can expect to analyze whether time-and-materials contracts have become their default contracting method when other pricing arrangements may be more appropriate, a Defense Department official has said.

The Government Accountability Office said in a June 29 report that DOD is turning to those contracts because they can be awarded quickly and the department can adjust some parts of them if issues arise. Despite their increasing use, contracting officers rarely explain why they pass on less-risky contract types. Also, GAO found little attempt to convert follow-on work to a different type of contract.

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