Contractors to give GSA IT security plans

January 12, 2012 by cs

The General Services Administration will require vendors to provide information technology security plans detailing how they are meeting federal cyber regulations under a new rule published on Jan. 6, 2012.

GSA said that changes are will apply to IT contracts awarded after Jan. 6, 2012 and that contractors must submit their IT security plans within 30 days of the contract award.

The plan should detail the processes and procedures the contractor will follow for “appropriate security of IT resources… used under the contract.”

GSA said it will use this information to verify that IT data and systems are effectively secured from unauthorized users. GSA will also inspect prime contractors’ and subcontractors’ facilities and IT systems.

Both prime and subcontractors will submit written proof of IT security authorization six months after the award in order to verify the validity of their security plan. The required plans and proposals will be included in IT contract solicitations.

– by Katelyn Noland, ExecutiveGov, on Jan. 6, 2012 at http://www.executivegov.com/2012/01/contractors-to-give-gsa-it-security-plans/

 

White House urges agencies to remember small businesses for micro purchases

December 30, 2011 by cs

Continuing its push to support small businesses, the White House is reminding agency financial and acquisition officers not to forget small firms when they make credit card micro purchases of $3,000 or less, which are not affected by larger scale required set-asides.

A Dec. 19 letter from Dan Gordon, the departing administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy, and Danny Werfel, controller, said the Office of Management and Budget and the Small Business Administration are “working with agencies to improve access by small businesses to the federal marketplace and to increase communications to small businesses about federal business opportunities.” Agency purchase cardholders “should consider small businesses, to the maximum extent practicable, when making micro purchases.”

According to a private study required by Congress, agencies used the General Services Administration’s SmartPay® purchase cards in fiscal 2010 for $6 billion in transactions with small businesses at or below the micro purchase threshold. This amounts to about 30 percent of the total annual government purchase card spending, the letter stated.

The White House asked agencies within six months to “adjust cardholder training as needed to help ensure cardholders continue to place a reasonable proportion of micro purchases with small businesses, consistent with agency mission support needs.”

– by Charles S. Clark – Government Executive – December 22, 2011 – http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=49632&dcn=e_gvet.

OFPP, SBA team up on procurement data

November 22, 2011 by cs

Agencies may soon have a smoother and faster process to deal with small-business contracting data. The Office of Federal Procurement Policy and the Small Business Administration said Nov. 14 in a memo that they are aligning operations.

Each year, SBA sends individual reports to agencies on anomalies related to small-business contracting awards. The reports help officials answer questions about data before SBA releases its small-business contracting scorecards. Then agencies turn in reports to OFPP and the General Services Administration, certifying that their procurement data is accurate and complete.

This fiscal year, OFPP and SBA will begin integrating the two processes. Officials said integrating the small-business data quality reviews will reduce the acquisition workforce’s work and improve acquisition planning. They also said the new alignment will improve accuracy of the data.

For the fiscal 2011 data reviews, SBA will provide agencies with anomaly reports. These reports will be focused on high-risk areas though.

OFPP and SBA want something in return for their changes.

“We ask that you increase the attention given to small-business data quality as part of your ongoing data validation efforts,” they wrote in the memo.

Officials expect agencies to incorporate a stronger focus on small-business data.

To help with that, GSA is developing standard anomaly reports available in the Federal Procurement Data System. These reports use the protocols currently available to agencies. They will be easier to use with a standard form.

About the Author: Matthew Weigelt is a senior writer covering acquisition and procurement for Federal Computer Week.  This article appeared Nov. 18, 2011 at http://fcw.com/articles/2011/11/18/ofpp-sba-small-business-procurement-data.aspx.

New rule funnels more contracts to small businesses

November 7, 2011 by cs

Under a proposed new rule, small companies are expected to get more business through multiple-award contractors because that’s where the money has increasingly been going since the mid-1990s.

Regulators have revised the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) to match the fluctuation toward task-order contracts, such as governmentwide acquisition contracts, blanket purchase agreements and agencywide contracts. The Office of Federal Procurement Policy has pushed those types of vehicles to streamline purchasing and get lower prices.

Officials released an interim rule Nov. 2 about the FAR revisions. The rule took effect the same day.

The changes make clear that contracting officers can set aside orders for small businesses both on blanket purchase agreements under the General Services Administration’s Multiple Award Schedules and on multiple-award contracts.

The revisions add a new section in the FAR. It authorizes agencies to set aside one or more contracts for small business on a multiple-award contract, including any of the socioeconomic programs, such as the service-disabled, veteran-owned small business program.

Officials are hopeful for what the changes will bring to small businesses. at the Defense Department, GSA, and NASA expect agencies to take advantage of the set-aside revisions. They want agencies to identify possible multiple-award contracts through which they could set- aside orders for small businesses. They also want agencies to set aside more orders when using GSA’s Schedules, according to the notice.

The changes are based on law and an advisory group.

Congress included language in the Small Business Jobs Act, which became law in 2010, addressing set-asides among task and delivery orders.

Also in 2010, an interagency panel, which was created by President Barack Obama to study small-business contracting, found the issue needed some attention since multiple-award contracts have become so popular.

“There has been no attempt to create a comprehensive policy for orders placed under either general task-and-delivery-order contracts or Schedule contracts that rationalizes and appropriately balances the need for efficiency with the need to maximize opportunities for small businesses,” the Task Force on Small Business Contracting wrote in its report.

About the Author: Matthew Weigelt is a senior writer covering acquisition and procurement for Washington Technology. Published Nov. 3, 2011 at http://washingtontechnology.com/articles/2011/11/03/small-business-set-asides-multiple-award-contracts.aspx?s=wtdaily_041111

Fraud continues in small business preference programs

October 31, 2011 by cs

Contractor fraud in small business set-aside programs is difficult to detect and prove, but its annual costs to government are significant in dollars and damage to legitimate business that deserve the work, two federal watchdogs told a House panel Thursday.

In fulfilling the Obama administration’s goal of giving 23 percent of prime federal contracts to small business, agencies need to do better at making a public example of “bad actors” and at vetting contractors that misrepresent their qualifications for minority advantages through self-certification, according to Peggy Gustafson, inspector general for the Small Business Administration, and Brian Miller, IG for the General Services Administration.

They spoke at a hearing of the House Small Business Subcommittee on Investigations, Oversight and Regulations called by Chairman Mike Coffman, R-Colo., who sought to learn why much contractor fraud goes unpunished and unprosecuted.

“Just as we all benefit from small business prime contracting, we all suffer when fraud rears its ugly head,” Coffman said. “Legitimate small businesses lose the ability to perform when contracts go to firms that do not qualify for, or who are not following the rules associated with, the small business contracting program. The government suffers from this fraud because bad actors give all small businesses a bad name, so contacting officers are more reluctant to use the small business programs, which in turn results in less competition and a less vibrant industrial base.”

The set-aside programs consist chiefly of preferences for section 8(a) business development, Historically Underutilized Business Zones, women-owned businesses and the service-disabled veteran-owned program. Both inspectors general testified that their own agencies had fallen victim to fraud. SBA and the HUBZone certification program played a role in the sensational case exposed with the arrests earlier this month involving $20 million in fraud allegedly committed by contractors and two employees of the Army Corps of Engineers, Gustafson noted.

Miller described a recent $6 million contract awarded to a company that claimed to be run by a disabled veteran whose documents said he served three tours of duty during the Vietnam War and received medals and citations. It turned out, Miller said, he was a mechanical engineer serving stateside in the National Guard.

“It’s difficult to prove a monetary loss to the government because it did receive the goods and services,” Miller said. “But the real loss is to program integrity, to the legitimate small businesses that didn’t get the contract.” He added that fraudulent self-certification is difficult to detect and agencies rely on such information in the majority of the preference contract awards because their resources are limited.

“Strong penalties are needed to deter” the fraud, he said. “The tougher it is to detect, the tougher penalties must be,” though the rules should avoid punishing innocent companies simply because of a clerical error, he said.

Gustafson said each type of set-aside has its own level of vetting and the Section 8 program is the hardest for contractors to qualify for. She agreed that agencies could deter more fraud by publicizing their reviews of such programs, which in one instance prompted “contractors to drop out in droves.” It is acknowledged by all IGs, she added, “that the federal government doesn’t use suspension and debarment enough — that hits contractors in the pocketbook.”

Miller noted that GSA has an interactive map on its website providing other agencies with links to state databases reporting contractors that have been suspended or debarred.

Coffman asked whether agencies should take more responsibility for policing fraud. “It’s hard to draw simple rules,” Gustafson said. “Overburdened” agencies focused on awarding contracts are “not expected to know all the ins and outs” of the set-aside programs. Also, “the more difficult the rules are to administer, the harder it is to present the case to a jury,” she said.

But the issue “needs more discussion in the executive branch and guidance from Congress since it’s not always clear who’s minding the store,” she said. “If the programs don’t have integrity, we might as well throw them open to open competition.”

– by Charles S. Clark - Government Executive – October 27, 2011 – http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=49156&dcn=e_gvet

SAM deployment likely to be delayed; GSA might replace DUNS

October 25, 2011 by cs

A General Services Administration (GSA) effort to consolidate federal online acquisition systems will likely receive no development money during the current fiscal year, causing GSA officials to anticipate a delay in the project.

However, GSA officials are going forward with a planned sources sought notice, to be released shortly, seeking private sector input on the viability of replacing mandatory federal vendor acquirement of a DUNS number from Dun & Bradstreet with a government-generated unique identifier.

If the government does replace DUNS with its own unique identifier system for vendors, the transition would likely be tied to the third phase of the online acquisition system consolidation effort, said Kathleen Turco, head of GSA’s office of governmentwide policy, during an Oct. 21 interview.

The integration effort seeks to consolidate 9 currently separate systems into one, to be known as the System for Award Management, or SAM. IBM received a $74.4 million contract in 2010 to develop the SAM architecture; part of the consolidation effort includes unifying the currently disparate databases into a single, unified one.

Because GSA received $7 million in development funds during fiscal 2011, which ended on Sept. 30, it will be able to proceed with the first phase of the consolidation, which will tie together Central Contractor Registration, Online Representations and Certifications Application and the Excluded Parties List System.

Starting in May, front-end users will find that they have to log onto SAM only once to access the functionalities of all three systems, Turco said.

However, a request for $15 million in development, modernization and enhancement money for the current fiscal year has bumped up against spending constraints; the Senate Appropriations Committee markup of GSA’s fiscal 2012 spending bill denied the request in total. The House version would appropriate about $3 million in DME money for the project, Turco said. Congress has yet to pass any fiscal 2012 appropriations bill; the federal government is operating under a continuing resolution that expires on midnight of Nov. 18.

As a result of the House and Senate marks, Turco said GSA will likely postpone roll out of phase 2, under which GSA plans to consolidate FedBizOps, the Electronic Subcontracting Reporting System, and the Assistance Program Catalog. Originally, GSA had planned to unveil that phase in the spring of 2013; if GSA receives sufficient funding for fiscal 2013, it would be able to complete that phase in spring 2014, Turco said.

The third phase would consolidate FPDS , Wage Determinations Online and the Past Performance Information Retrieval System. The earliest phase 3 could now be completed–it was originally planned for spring 2014–is now spring 2015, Turco said.

It’s in conjunction with phase 3 that GSA would likely also transition from using DUNS as a unique vendor identifier to a government-generated number, if GSA decides to do so, Turco added.

Vendors wishing to do business with the government must receive a unique identifier–in some cases, more than one, depending on the number of physical locations and legal divisions a company has–and GSA has long contracted with Dun & Bradstreet for government vendors to receive Data Universal Numbering System identifier for free.

But, the government pays Dun & Bradstreet $18 million a year for the service, making it the single most expensive element of the Integrated Acquisition Environment, the name GSA gives to 9 systems set for consolidation into SAM.

“We’ve had a lot of push on us from the Hill and many vendors have said to us ‘Why is it only Dun and Bradstreet?’” Turco said.

However, replacing DUNS would be no easy task, she acknowledged, since DUNS are used in financial systems to pay vendors and have become deeply integrated into IAE feeder systems.

– by David Perera, Fierce Government IT, Oct. 24, 2011 – http://www.fiercegovernmentit.com/story/turco-sam-deployment-likely-be-delayed-gsa-might-replace-duns/2011-10-22?utm_medium=nl&utm_source=internal

GSA offers webinar tips for marketing to the government

October 24, 2011 by cs

GSA is hosting a live webinar to provide new small businesses insider tips on successful government contracting.

The webisnar is scheduled for Monday, Nov. 14, 2011, from 1:00 to 2:00 pm EST.

The webinar is entitled ”Six Easy Steps for Marketing Your Business to the Federal Government.”   The training is designed based on feedback from seasoned contractors who have provided insight to their success.

Space is limited.  Reserve your space now by going to https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/392544194.  If you are denied participation in this webinar, the participant capacity has been reached.

SBA proposals could make small-biz credit easier to get

October 18, 2011 by cs

The Small Business Administration is considering changes to its rules that would allow an agency spending its money through a task or delivery order to chalk up the awards to its own subcontracting plans, according to a Oct. 5 Federal Register notice.

Agencies could start to get credit toward their annual small-business  subcontracting goals for their orders placed against multiple-agency  contracts, a perk for agencies as procurement policy officials push  strategic sourcing.

Each agency has to set its own annual goal to make sure that various types of small businesses have an opportunity to participate in its contracts.

Currently though, when purchases come through an inter-agency contract, the agency that holds the contract gets the credit. That applies to the General Services Administration Schedules contracts too.

For example, consider an agency that places an order against a governmentwide acquisition contract. Say a large company gets the award and subcontracts some of the work to a small business subcontractor. The agency that hosts the GWAC gets the credit for hiring a small business, not the agency placing the order.

Prime contracts work differently. If an agency awards an order placed on a GWAC directly to a small business, the purchasing agency gets the points.

Agency officials have told SBA they would like to get the small-business subcontracting credit when they’re spending the money. SBA is also considering giving discretion to the contracting officer from the agency that’s placing the order to establish the subcontracting goals related to the individual orders.

Officials also want real-time insight into subcontracting on interagency contracts. Contractor may have to report their subcontracts with small businesses to the host agency’s contracting officer for each order.

Currently, contractors are reporting to the agency twice a year at the most.

“Reporting on an order-by-order basis will allow the funding agency to receive credit towards its small-business subcontracting goals,” SBA writes in its proposal.

SBA is taking input on the proposal through Dec. 5.

In light of SBA’s changes, Dan Gordon, administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy, has pushed agencies to think beyond their own purchasing and, instead, buy with the government in mind.

Strategic sourcing gives the government leverage over the contractor in setting prices. A greater quantity of potential orders encourages contractors to lower prices.

Office of Management and Budget officials believe agencies want to use more interagency contracts in order to squeeze the most out of their funds and lessen their employees’ workload.

“Particularly in this tight budgetary environment, agencies have told us they are eager for tools that can help them stretch a dollar further and do more with less,” an OMB spokeswoman said Oct. 5.

SBA’s proposed change may make subcontracting goals slightly easier to meet, especially if agencies are turning more toward the interagency contracts, said Ken Dodds, senior attorney at SBA.

He said agencies would find it more difficult to meet subcontracting goals if they didn’t credit.

About the Author: Matthew Weigelt is a senior writer covering acquisition and procurement for Washington Technology.  This article appeared Oct. 12, 2011 at http://washingtontechnology.com/articles/2011/10/12/sba-subcontracting-credit-multiple-agency-contracts.aspx?s=wtdaily_141011.

‘Business Breakthrough’ resources now available

October 15, 2011 by cs

The Georgia Tech Procurement Assistance Center (GTPAC) played host last week to a three-day workshop sponsored by the General Services Administration (GSA).  Titled “Business Breakthrough,” the Sept. 27-29, 2011 workshop was designed to assist businesses in the region navigate contracting opportunities and methods with GSA.

GSA oversees the business of the U.S. federal government. GSA’s acquisition solutions supplies federal purchasers with products and services from commercial vendors. GSA also manages all non-military buildings, and oversees the preservation of historic federal properties. Its policies cover travel, property and management practices.

GSA leadership from Washington, DC were on hand at the event as were representatives of GSA’s Region IV office.

A number of resources were made available to GTPAC as a result of hosting the workshop, and we’re happy to share them with you.  Links are provided below to  all workshop materials:

Resource documents you’ll be interested in accesing are:

 

 

 

IT Schedule 70 to get new director

September 22, 2011 by cs

Kay Ely is coming aboard as the new director of the General Services Administration’s largest Multiple Award Schedule, IT Schedule 70, according to a tweet Sept. 14.

“Two big pieces of news in the @GSA_ITS world—welcoming Kevin Youel-Page as the ITS Deputy AC & Kay Ely as the Director of Schedule 70,” tweeted Mary Davie, assistant commissioner for the Federal Acquisition Service’s Integrated Technology Service at GSA.

Ely starts Sept. 25.

Ely is the chief learning officer at the Office of Personnel Management and had been deputy associate director for contracting for facilities and administrative services there.

Davie chose Kevin Youel Page as her deputy, making the announcement to staff Sept. 13. He too will start Sept. 25.

Schedule 70 is one of GSA’s most lucrative schedules. In 2010, IT Schedule 70 had $16 billion in federal sales.

First quarter sales for fiscal 2011 indicate that 2011 may surpass fiscal 2010′s sales, according to EZGSA, a consulting firm that specializes in GSA Schedules contracts. The IT schedule had $4.7 billion in sales in the first quarter of 2011, and $4.5 billion during the same period in 2010, a 7 percent increase.

Here’s Davie’s announcement.

Colleagues,

It’s a big week in ITS! I’m pleased to announce the selection of Kay Ely as the Director of the IT Schedule 70 Program. Kay is a current Senior Executive at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) where she most recently served as the Chief Learning Officer. She has an extensive background in federal IT acquisition, including both policy and operations, through both private and public sector positions. At OPM, Kay also served as the Deputy Associate Director for Contracting, Facilities and Administrative Services and was the Procurement Executive leading the information technology branch.  She served as a Senior Principal at Acquisition Solutions where she led the federal civilian acquisition consulting practice. She also served as the Associate Administrator for Acquisition Implementation at the Office of Federal Procurement Policy and as the Director of Acquisition Resources Services at the Department of Veterans Affairs. Kay’s well-rounded experience in IT acquisition and leadership positions across government give her a unique perspective that will add tremendous value to GSA and to the ITS leadership team. Kay will be joining ITS on September 25.

Mary

– by Matthew Weigelt of Washington Technology on Sept. 15, 2011 at http://washingtontechnology.com/blogs/circuit/2011/09/kay-ely-gsa-opm-schedule-70.aspx?s=wtdaily_190911.