GSA to make new bid for agency customers

GSA to offer contracts in the areas of cloud computing, transparency

The General Services Administration is gearing up to offer help to federal agencies looking to participate in the Obama administration’s initiatives on transparency and cloud computing, a GSA official said today.

GSA hopes to win customers that otherwise might have developed their own contracts or services.

“We see the administration’s requirements, we respond by initiating some kind of contract action, and make it fast and easy for government agencies to use,” said Ed O’Hare, the new assistant commissioner for Integrated Technology Services (ITS) at GSA's Federal Acquisition Service. He spoke at a FedSources breakfast meeting.

Obama administration officials have created numerous Web sites, such as Recovery.gov and Data.gov, to offer more information to the public. The new chief information officer, Vivek Kundra, is also moving ahead on the use of cloud computing.

O’Hare described cloud computing as a data center wrapped up with software as a solution. He wants to make it possible for agencies to buy such services using government credit cards, especially when they’re under deadline.

“You don’t have to go to the CIO, you don’t have to go plan it, you don’t have to go buy servers or digital maps or do” certification and accreditation, O’Hare said. Instead, he would like agencies to be able to log onto a Web site, answer a few questions about their needs and then, “Boom, check out, you got it.”

With O’Hare as the chief of ITS, experts now expect greater attention to day-to-day operations. They say he has been on the industry side of GSA and worked inside the agency, and therefore understands how ITS runs.

When John Johnson retired earlier this month as assistant commissioner for ITS, major contracts had been awarded and customers were placing orders. That leaves O’Hare to deal with how the office runs.

“My job is to make it work,” O'Hare said. He wants to make ITS and GSA’s information technology services faster, better and cheaper than what other agencies can offer.

He also talked about reducing the time it takes to get an IT contract on GSA’s Multiple Award Schedules program. Contractors are frustrated because it can take months to get on the IT Schedule 70 or modify one of those contracts.

“I know we’ve got to do better,” O’Hare said.

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Obama signs law to reform weapons buying

The law puts checks on big-ticket weapons acquisitions to keep them on schedule and hold down costs.

President Barack Obama signed legislation yesterday to change how the Defense Department buys and tracks acquisitions of major weapons systems.

“When it comes to purchasing weapons systems and developing defense projects, the choice we face is between investments that are designed to keep the American people safe and those that are simply designed to make a defense company or a contractor rich,” Obama said before signing the bill.

The Weapons Systems Acquisition Reform Act (S. 454) requires DOD to appoint senior officials to assess a project’s performance and analyze underlying causes for any of its shortcomings, such as unrealistic expectations, too little funding, or poor work by a contractor or DOD.

It requires officials to encourage competition, including 10 competition-promoting measures to consider when setting acquisition strategies. It also deals with organizational conflicts of interest, requires a study of earned value management, and sets checkpoints at certain milestones in projects.

The law's purpose is to limit cost overruns before they spiral out of control, Obama said. "Wasteful spending comes from exotic requirements, lack of oversight and indefensible no-bid contracts."

Obama also said this is the first step in fixing how the government buys things. “It reforms a system where taxpayers are charged too much for weapons systems that too often arrive late,” he said. Obama signed a memo March 4 designed to improve the procurement system.

However, acquisition experts say the vast majority of purchases are received as agencies requested.

“By and large the government gets what it wants, when it wants it, for the price it’s wiling to pay,” said Alan Chvotkin, executive vice president and counsel at the Professional Services Council, who spoke this week at a panel discussion about the federal acquisition workforce. However, he said the procurement system still has room for improvements.

At the same discussion, Steven Schooner, an associate law professor and co-director of the Government Procurement Law Program at George Washington University, pointed out the Obama administration views contractors as lining their pockets at the taxpayers’ expense. Schooner said the president, Congress and the news media can’t treat contractors as pariahs because the government can’t operate without contractors’ support.

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Experts: Acquisition jobs offer few incentives

Federal contracting careers losing appeal

Federal acquisition employees have no good reason to continue their careers in government procurement, a panel of experts said May 19.

Contracting specialists have been relegated to ordinary positions at agencies after once being held in high esteem, said Steve Kempf, assistant commissioner of acquisition management at the General Services Administration’s Federal Acquisition Service.

“I think we’ve lowered them in the food chain,” said Kempf, a career acquisition employee. When Kempf entered the field two decades ago, contracting officers were revered and had their own offices. He said today though they’ve been downgraded to cubicles.

His point was an underlying theme of a discussion among eight government acquisition experts hosted by the congressional Smart Contracting Caucus. They said the acquisition community is being criticized by Congress and the news media, which pounce on mistakes regardless of whether they are fraud or honest errors.

“Contracting officers get beat down a lot,” Kempf said, adding that one mistake could end a career.

“Frankly, they have every reason to fear for their careers,” said Steve Schooner, an associate law professor and co-director of the Government Procurement Law Program at George Washington University.

Scott Amey, general counsel at the Project on Government Oversight, said oversight and accountability aren’t punishment. However, overseers inside and outside government need to determine when an error is fraud or an honest mistake.

Despite the fear of making a career-ending error, contracting officers today focus on accomplishing as much as possible in a short time, the experts said.

“Their incentive is volume,” said John Needham, director of acquisition and sourcing management at the Government Accountability Office.

Government spending has increased dramatically in recent years — nearly doubling since 2000 — and the size of the overall workforce has increased only minimally. The workload pressures are stressful for acquisition employees. They hope they don’t make a major mistake, but they don’t have time to check all the details of each acquisition, experts said.

There are few other incentives for acquisition employees to stay with the government. The private sector can offer them more money and benefits. Furthermore, the government retirement system creates incentives for employees to leave for the private sector, said Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), a caucus member and ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Experts also said it takes months to get a job with the government because of its broken hiring system.

Overall, the field has lost its luster because it’s now an administrative job, the panelists said.

Members of the younger generation recognize that and are not attracted to the acquisition field. Schooner said the descriptions of government openings on USAJobs.gov are generic and boring. “The jobs just don’t smell good,” he said.

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