Army researches contract to fill ITES gaps

Small businesses will have another chance to snag a contract with the Army.

This fiscal year, the Army Small Computer Program plans to award a $23 million multiple-award contract for information technology services to small businesses. The contract will complement the Army’s Information Technology Enterprise Services – 2, said Micki Laforgia, project director at ACSP.

Laforgia said the Army found that ITES-2 doesn’t cover certain areas, such as maintenance on some equipment, and when the contract was written, recent requirements, such as green IT, didn’t exist. The set-aside contract aims to fill those gaps.

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Army: Bolstering acquisition workforce could take 10 years

Building up the Army’s acquisition workforce into an adequately staffed, experienced labor force will likely take as long as 10 years, a top Army officer told a Senate panel Dec. 6.

The Commission on Army Acquisition and Program Management in Expeditionary Operations stated in a report released Nov. 1 that the Army should add 1,400 employees to balance the dramatic increase in defense spending since the 2001 terrorist attacks against the 25 percent of the acquisition workforce cut in the 1990s.

Lt. Gen. Ross Thompson, military deputy to the assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology, said it would take about three years to fill 400 positions with military contracting officers and 1,000 jobs with civilian contracting officers.

But getting contracting officers training, certification and essential hands-on experience will require the most time, he told the Senate Armed Service Committee’s Readiness and Management Support Subcommittee.

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Panel finds contracting disarray

A panel of Defense Department experts has concluded that the Army overworks and undervalues its contracting officers, and it has recommended that the service immediately make some tough decisions to fix its contracting problems.

Since the 2001 terrorist attacks, the Army’s contracting workload has increased 600 percent and spending on contracts is up 300 percent, said Jacques Gansler, former Defense undersecretary for acquisition, technology and logistics, who led the Commission on Army Acquisition and Program Management in Expeditionary Operations. During a period when workloads and spending increased, the Army’s acquisition workforce numbers stayed the same or declined in some cases, Gansler said.

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IG: ITES-2S restricts small biz

The Army tied too many contracts together to form a $20 billion contract without justifying it, restricting small businesses from competing for the contract, a new audit found.

The Defense Department’s Office of the Inspector General determined that the Army Contracting Agency coded its Information Technology Enterprise Solutions-2 Services (ITES-2S) contract too liberally. The Army should have selected an industry classification system code that better describes the principal nature of the services it wants to buy, the IG said. The miscoding led to a bundled contract unsuitable for small businesses, according to the Aug. 9 audit.

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Lawmaker: Commitment crucial to meeting set-aside goals

What does the Army have that few other agencies have when it comes to veteran-owned small businesses? Commitment, one lawmaker says.

The Army forecasts more than $1.7 billion through fiscal 2013 in potential set-asides exclusively for small businesses owned by service-disabled veterans. That amount comes after the service sent about $691 million in contract dollars last year to those businesses, up from $100 million in 2003, Lt. Col. James Blanco, assistant to the director of the Army’s Small Business Programs Office, said July 26.

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