SBA chief: Tougher times ahead for agency contracting scores

Federal agencies will find out late this spring how well they contracted with small businesses in fiscal 2007, and receiving good grades is getting tougher, the Small Business Administration’s top official 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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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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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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IG: Contract data late, incorrect

As the government’s procurement chief pushes contracting officers to enter acquisition information directly and immediately into a major database, a March 30 report finds that agencies did not do so with data from the 2005 Hurricane Katrina disaster.

The General Services Administration’s Office of Inspector General audited the Federal Procurement Data System-Next Generation and found inaccurate and untimely information.

“Overall, data reliability is dependent on agencies having a vested interest,” the report concludes.

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