Concern grows over stalled GSA nomination
January 11, 2010 by llyons
By Robert Brodsky rbrodsky@govexec.com January 11, 2010
For more than eight months, Martha Johnson has been in bureaucratic purgatory.
President Obama nominated Johnson on April 3, 2009, to serve as chief of the General Services Administration, and she easily cleared the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee in June. But, Johnson’s name has yet to reach the Senate floor for a full vote due to a hold by Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., involving a Kansas City building project.
A former GSA chief of staff during the Clinton administration, Johnson now has waited longer than any other Obama nominee to be confirmed. And, some are beginning to suggest that the White House is not doing enough to break the stalemate.
“One has to wonder why the president is not being more aggressive and energetic in his defense of Martha Johnson,” said GSA former Administrator Lurita A. Doan, who held the spot from May 2006 until she resigned in controversy in April 2008 and is now a Federal News Radio commentator. “The GSA administrator is an important position with broad responsibilities. Martha Johnson was President Obama’s nominee. Obama could push Johnson’s confirmation forward if he wanted to, but he seems content to allow her to twist in the wind.”
Doan was forced out of the job after butting heads with Democratic lawmakers, GSA’s inspector general and eventually, the Bush White House. Since then, the agency has been in perpetual transition.
David Bibb served as acting administrator from May 2008 until his retirement three months later. Jim Williams, the commissioner of GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service, filled in until the Obama administration appointed Paul Prouty as acting chief in January 2009. Prouty, whose family is in Denver, opted to return home last month and resume his former job as assistant regional administrator in the Public Buildings Service in GSA’s Rocky Mountain Region. Stephen Leeds, who had been working as a senior counselor to Prouty, was named the fourth acting administrator in 20 months.
The ongoing management upheaval apparently has taken its toll. Last week, Danielle Germain, named GSA’s chief of staff in June, stepped down, citing the lengthy delay in Johnson’s nomination. Meanwhile, Barnaby Brasseux, who served as GSA’s deputy administrator since September 2008, retired in early January.
“Fundamentally, the agency can still function, almost on autopilot,” said a former GSA official who requested anonymity to speak freely about the situation. “But, without a leader there is no one really setting the agenda or laying out their vision of what needs to be done.”
GSA spokeswoman Sahar Wali said the delays have not hurt morale or general operations, but rather kept the agency in a permanent transition period.
“Imagine a business being without a CEO,” Wali said. “Now imagine that for two years.”
An industry source said part of the problem is GSA is not a high-visibility agency and Johnson lacks the political connections to broker a deal. And, while GSA is undergoing its share of personnel upheaval, sources said the situation pales in comparison to the void at the Transportation Security Administration, where, in the midst of several crises, including an attempted terrorist attack on Christmas Day, Erroll Southers’ nomination to serve as administrator has been delayed by a hold from Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C.
“I’ve worried all along about nominees that get held up, particularly when it has nothing to do with the nominee or his or her qualifications,” the industry source said. “Given all of the high-priority issues on the table, the need to make all kinds of deals, how much is the White House willing to give for an individual?”
Another well-informed acquisition source said the White House has “hung [Johnson] out to dry.” But, sources told Government Executive the White House is not considering alternatives to Johnson at this point.
The Office of Management and Budget did not respond to a request for comment.
By February, the Senate is expected to invoke cloture on Johnson’s nomination, along with several other appointees currently being bogged down by holds, according to one government source familiar with discussions. Cloture — a process in which debate on a bill or nomination is brought to an end — can be complicated. It requires 60 votes, can take 30 hours of debate and no other legislative matters can be considered until the process is complete.
“They just need to set aside time for debate,” the government source said. “That’s the big issue right now.”
Some lawmakers, however, are getting impatient. Leslie Phillips, a spokeswoman for the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said Chairman Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., is “frustrated” by the delay in Johnson’s confirmation.
“It is contrary to the public interest to block a qualified nominee based on parochial interests, and irresponsible to block a nominee for this length of time,” Phillips said. “GSA needs strong, focused leadership, and the hold on Martha Johnson’s nomination puts the entire agency at a disadvantage.”
Bond’s hold apparently has little to do with Johnson’s qualifications, which sources indicated are not in doubt. The senator wants GSA to close down the federally owned Bannister Federal Complex outside Kansas City and relocate the 1,200 employees who work there to office space downtown, as part of a major revitalization project.
The original plan, submitted to Congress in 2008, had been for a local developer to build a new office center and lease it back to GSA. Sources said Brad Scott, who served as GSA’s regional administrator in Kansas City during President George W. Bush’s administration, brokered the plan. Scott was Bond’s deputy chief of staff for 12 years.
GSA officials said they still plan to move employees from the Bannister complex but have changed their strategy from leasing the new space to building and buying it. Bond’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
“GSA has done what it can to move forward with this process,” Wali said.
(C) 2010 BY NATIONAL JOURNAL GROUP, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Procurement reform fever to die down in 2010
January 7, 2010 by cs
By Matthew Weigelt - Jan. 07, 2010 – What a difference a year makes, even if in a wholly unexpected way.
On March 4, 2009, President Barack Obama delivered what had the makings to be a game-changing speech for the federal information technology community. The president outlined his agenda for overhauling federal procurement, promising to end wasteful contracting practices and wean agencies off their reliance on government contractors.
The federal market was soon buzzing about fixed-priced contracts, reinvigorated competition, and a pronounced shift from the outsourcing of government work to the insourcing of contractor work.
“The way government agencies acquire the goods and services needed to carry out their responsibilities will take an abrupt 180-degree turn if President Barack Obama gets his way,” Federal Computer Week reported at the time.
However, the buzz generated by that speech and its accompanying memo has grown quiet, and the market is back to business as usual, or nearly so. What seemed like the start a major reform initiative 10 months ago now appears to have been a new president putting his stamp on issues that previous administrations have also tackled.
Contracting policies “have been fairly consistent throughout the years. It’s just good public policy,” said Robert Burton, former deputy administrator at the Office of Federal Procurement Policy and now a partner at Venable law firm.
That’s not to say the speech was empty rhetoric. The administration followed the March 4 memo with additional guidance and initiatives in the areas of cost-reimbursement and sole-source contracting, the acquisition workforce, and workforce management.
Administration officials also have prodded agencies to identify opportunities for saving money through improved procurement practices. Obama predicted that the memo and the governmentwide guidance could save the government as much as $40 billion. On Dec. 21, Jeffrey Zients, deputy director for management at the Office of Management and Budget, said the administration was nearly halfway there, having identified $19 billion in potential savings.
More agencies are buying in bulk to get volume discounts, Zients said at a press briefing. They’re also using reverse auctions, in which companies compete for work by offering a lower price than another bidder — the opposite of an eBay auction. And NASA, among other agencies, reviewed its contracts and shifted some high-risk programs to fixed-price contracts, making it possible to keep its costs under control.
Zients said he estimates that agencies are on track to save 3.5 percent this fiscal year and 7 percent by the end of fiscal 2011. And of course, the contractor community continues to watch warily as the administration beats the drum for bringing government work in-house.
Still, most of Obama’s procurement agenda is remarkably similar to that of previous administrations. For example, the shift to fixed-price contracting, a central piece of Obama’s agenda, has been a priority of the procurement community for years and was incorporated into the Federal Acquisition Regulation.
“A lot of the guidance was essentially a reinforcement of previously stated preferred procurement practices,” said Larry Allen, president of the Coalition for Government Procurement.
What Obama has done is refocus the procurement community. That is not a trivial matter, but it is not a game changer. “Overall, I think the impact of the guidance issued so far will be like turning the procurement landscape from royal blue to sky blue, not from black to white,” Allen said.
Ray Bjorklund, senior vice president and chief knowledge officer at FedSources, said the focus of the March 4 memo and related guidance is not the contracting principles but the acquisition community, such as the employees and the purchasing process.
“I think the extent to which the memo will affect the policies of the future is in laying the foundation for a fresh look — not at the law and regulation,” he said. “I don’t see any serious intent to correct or change the underlying laws and regulations.”
Burton said the Bush administration tackled many of the same issues on Obama’s agenda.
For example, Bush launched a program called Be America’s Buyer to recruit a new generation of acquisition experts. He also introduced training certifications for contracting officers, their technical representatives and even program managers. The Bush administration’s agenda also included tracking down contracting fraud and abuse, reducing the use of risky contracting approaches, and improving competition for contracts.
Mark Amtower, an industry consultant and founding partner of Amtower and Co., said issues such as limiting contractors’ influence in government decision-making “have been with us to a greater or lesser degree forever. They do not go away.”
Rule would waive Buy American provisions for some Afghanistan support contracts
January 6, 2010 by llyons
By Elizabeth Newell enewell@govexec.com January 6, 2010
A Federal Acquisition Regulation rule change filed on Wednesday would waive certain Buy American restrictions for contracts in support of operations in Afghanistan. The waiver would apply to nine countries in the Afghan region and would exclude some products such as guns and ammunition.
The proposed rule would implement a July 2009 declaration from Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn to the same effect. Lynn’s waiver, outlined in a memorandum from Shay Assad, director of Defense acquisition and procurement policy, to military and contracting officials, stated that allowing Defense to buy support items from South Caucasus and Central and South Asian countries — specifically Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan — has a range of potential benefits.
Permitting these acquisitions would improve local market and transportation infrastructure in the Afghan region; reduce the U.S. government’s transportation costs; and facilitate “the free flow of regular, reliable large-scale shipments of products and services through the region in support of the operations in Afghanistan,” Lynn stated. The waiver would lift restrictions “inconsistent with the public interest” and encourage countries in the region to cooperate in expanding supply routes, he added. In turn, a more robust commercial transportation network in the area would help connect Afghanistan to its neighbors, promote regional commerce, diversify existing infrastructure, and generally bolster stability and prosperity, he noted.
The FAR rule, which is open to public comment until March 9, would apply this waiver to Defense Department contracts and those underwritten by the General Services Administration. There is a repeated exemption for arms, ammunition and war materials; the government will continue to be required to buy those products from American firms.
The proposal contains a clause aimed at reciprocity. Foreign companies that sign deals with the U.S. government under this provision would be required to inform their country’s government of its participation in the acquisition and that “it generally will not have such opportunity in the future unless its government provides reciprocal procurement opportunities to U.S. products and services and suppliers of such products and services.”
Comments on the proposal can be sent to dfars@osd.mil.
(C) 2010 BY NATIONAL JOURNAL GROUP, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Defense and State brace for surge in Afghanistan contracting
December 17, 2009 by cs
Lawmakers on Thursday expressed concern about the Defense and State departments’ ability to handle an influx of contractors in Afghanistan, but agency officials said they have taken steps to strengthen oversight.
During a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Contracting Oversight hearing, Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., said the degree of waste and fraud seen under contracts performed in Iraq does not bode well for efficiency in Afghanistan, particularly as the number of contractors in the region balloons to support the surge in troops.
According to the Congressional Research Service, if the ratio of contractors to U.S. military personnel remains roughly the same, the deployment of 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan would require 26,000 to 56,000 additional contractors. The number of contractors in Afghanistan already is growing; from June to September, there was a 40 percent increase in Defense contractors alone.
Auditors found “much of [the] waste [in Iraq] stemmed from inadequate contracting management, including contractors overseeing contractors, poor coordination of interagency efforts, continual personnel turnover and the challenges of contracting in a war zone,” McCaskill said.
To avoid similar issues in Afghanistan, the U.S. Agency for International Development has hired more contracting officer technical representatives and regional inspectors general, improved COTR training for quality-control and assurance, and boosted the number and quality of site visits, said Charles North, senior deputy director of the USAID Afghanistan-Pakistan Task Force. The agency also is modifying contracts to include more stringent reporting measures and providing additional guidance for COTRs in ensuring compliance.
“In planning, managing and overseeing assistance in Afghanistan, a high-risk environment in which corruption and extortion pose significant risks, it would be impossible for USAID to guarantee that wrongdoing will never occur,” North said. “However, we have put in place well designed systems and practices to minimize opportunities for misconduct.”
Daniel Feldman, deputy special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan at the State Department, said the focus is shifting away from large U.S.-based reconstruction contracts to smaller, more flexible contracts with fewer subcontracts and grants.
“The premise behind this flexibility is simple — in a dynamic conflict environment like Afghanistan, we need to be able to adapt our programs as conditions change on the ground,” Feldman said. “These smaller contracts and grants will be managed by U.S. officials in the field, closer to the actual activity implementation, making it easier for those same officials to direct, monitor and oversee projects to ensure the proper use of taxpayers’ funds.”
In most cases, the smaller contracts will be implemented by Afghans, but if the programs are not producing the desired results, State officials have more authority to direct corrective actions, Feldman said.
Army officials also testified to a renewed effort to control overseas contracts, noting they are concentrating on growing the service’s acquisition workforce. But Edward Harrington, deputy assistant secretary of the Army for procurement, and Jeffrey Parsons, executive director of the Army Contracting Command, cautioned the expansion won’t happen overnight.
“The time it takes to grow capable contracting professionals is measured in years, not months,” Harrington said. “The level of experience required to be able to adequately perform the complex contracting functions we demand of our contracting professionals generally is attained after about six to eight years of school training combined with hands-on, work experience.”
Harrington and Parsons said the Joint Contracting Command for Iraq/Afghanistan is “updating mission analysis” and assessing current resources to determine how best to support the additional 30,000 troops headed to Afghanistan.
Georgia Tech Helps Marietta Janitorial Company Land Government Contracts
October 29, 2009 by cs
In 1996, Toney Sellers, a 20-year veteran of the U.S. Navy, decided he wanted to start a janitorial company. Unique Cleaning Service, Inc. began with commercial clients, and by 2000, had branched into the federal arena. Over the past nine years, Unique Cleaning’s government contracts have grown from one to more than 60, a feat Sellers attributes partially to Georgia Tech’s Procurement Assistance Center (GTPAC).
GTPAC – part of the Georgia Tech Enterprise Innovation Institute – provides no-cost assistance with government procurement to any company licensed to do business in Georgia. Last year, GTPAC conducted seminars in Albany, Atlanta, Augusta, Carrollton, Columbus, Gainesville, Rockmart, Savannah and Warner Robins. The center assists companies with all aspects of federal, state and local government procurement processes, including solicitation analysis, proposal preparation, pre- and post-award counseling, and quality and accounting systems. Procurement counselors also analyze whether companies have the potential for participating in the government procurement process.
“We heard about GTPAC, contacted a procurement counselor, and he helped us develop a company profile to begin receiving electronic notifications that enabled us to view solicitations in the janitorial field based on a certain geographical area,” recalled Sellers. “Postings that we were interested in led us into the bid process with government agencies.”
In January 2001, Unique Cleaning became 8(a) certified by the U.S. Small Business Administration, meaning the company meets the requirements of being a small business, is unconditionally owned and controlled by one or more socially and economically disadvantaged people who are U.S. citizens, and demonstrates potential for success. Most importantly, having 8(a) certification means a business can bid on government projects that uncertified companies cannot.
In addition, at least one staff member from Unique Cleaning has attended every GTPAC seminar on topics as varied as preparing successful bids and proposals, understanding the General Services Administration schedules process, using the computer to win government contracts and marketing to state and local governments. They have also contacted procurement counselors Joe Beaulieu and Chuck Schadl to prepare a Freedom of Information Act request and provide information on small business size standards.
“These seminars are extremely helpful as a way of understanding how to do business with the local, state and federal agencies,” said Ellen Pine, Unique Cleaning’s manager of contract administration. “The workshops have allowed us an opportunity to meet other companies and network, and a wealth of data is transferred to seminar participants for future referral.”
Unique Cleaning has grown from a one-person business to more than 125 employees today, with contracts from Massachusetts to Puerto Rico to Oregon. The company, which has increased its revenue from $225,000 its first year, is now targeting the $10 million threshold. Unique Cleaning Service, Inc. now generates approximately 90 percent of its revenue from government-related contracts.
Unique Cleaning’s success has even been recognized by its hometown economic development agency. In 2009, the Cobb County Chamber of Commerce named Unique Cleaning one of the Top 25 Small Businesses in Cobb County, an award that recognizes member companies for increased sales and contributions to community-oriented projects.
“When we signed on with GTPAC in 2000, we had one government contract; we now have more than 60,” Sellers said. “Their professionalism and dedicated efforts to providing needed information are second to none.”
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