Georgia Tech Procurement Assistance Center

GSA plans to remove refurbished technology SIN during schedules consolidation

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The General Services Administration plans to remove a special contract category for agencies’ purchase of used or refurbished technology during its ongoing schedules consolidation.

The problem with the category — which GSA refers to as a special item number or SIN — for reselling tech is twofold.  Fraudsters are impersonating agencies placing IT orders, spoofing small businesses into sending used hardware to empty warehouses where the equipment is intercepted and sold on the black market without the bill ever being paid.

There have also been cases where the used or refurbished tech, although sold properly through the category, is counterfeit or has been altered in some way that doesn’t meet government standards, leaving agencies open to supply chain risks

There are “clear signs” small businesses are being phished by fraudsters, Lawrence Hale, a director within the GSA Federal Acquisition Service, said at the 930gov conference Tuesday.  In the latter case, he said, it’s “essentially a supply chain attack.”

GSA’s best course of action, Hale said, is to shut the SIN down.

Continue reading at:  Fedscoop

GSA announces STARS III IT contract for small businesses

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The General Services Administration released a draft solicitation Friday to replace an expiring governmentwide acquisition contract (GWAC) for small IT businesses.

The 8(a) Streamlined Technology Acquisition Resource for Services (STARS) III GWAC will replace its predecessor, 8(a) STARS II, when that ends Aug. 30, 2021.

Agencies will issue task order requests via 8(a) STARS III for information technology services from active participants in the Small Business Administration’s 8(a) Business Development program for startups.

Continue reading at:  Fedscoop

Interim rule banning Huawei and other Chinese equipment and services took effect August 13, 2019

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On August 7, 2019, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), General Services Administration (GSA), and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) released an interim rule implementing Section 889(a)(1)(A) of the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019 (2019 NDAA).  The rule, which goes into effect on August 13, 2019, generally prohibits executive agencies from procuring telecommunications equipment and services from Huawei and other Chinese technology companies and imposes strict reporting and other requirements on U.S. government contractors.  Interested parties are invited to file comments on the interim rule within 60 days of its publication in the Federal Register.

As background, Section 889(a)(1)(A) of the 2019 NDAA prohibits executive agencies from procuring or obtaining, or extending or renewing a contract to procure or obtain, any equipment, system, or service that uses “covered telecommunications equipment or services” as a substantial or essential component of any system, or as critical technology as part of any system.  The 2019 NDAA defines “covered telecommunications equipment or services” to include the following:

  • Telecommunications equipment produced by Huawei Technologies Company or ZTE Corporation (or any of their subsidiaries or affiliates);
  • Certain video surveillance and telecommunications equipment produced by Hytera Communications Corporation, Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology Company, or Dahua Technology Company (or any of their subsidiaries or affiliates);
  • Telecommunications or video surveillance services provided by such entities or using such equipment; and
  • Telecommunications or video surveillance equipment or services produced or provided by an entity owned or controlled by, or otherwise connected to, the government of a “covered foreign country,” which the interim rule defines as the People’s Republic of China.

Continue reading at:  Wiley Rein

Related Articles: 

Two deadlines for agencies, vendors to stop using Chinese telecom products quickly approaching (Federal News Network)

A ban on Chinese tech is on the books. Are feds ready? (Federal Times)

FedBizOpps will be gone before the end of the year

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The Federal Business Opportunities, or FedBizOpps, website will be shutting down before the end of 2019, as the comprehensive database of government contracting opportunities moves to a new location.

By the end of next year, 10 acquisition-focused websites managed by the General Services Administration will be merged together under the new SAM.gov.  Those sites include FedBizOpps, as well as the current System for Award Management, or SAM; the Federal Procurement Data System, FPDS; the grants site Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance, CFDA; Wage Determinations Online, WDOL; Electronic Subcontracting Reporting System, eSRS; the past performance databases, the Federal Awardee Performance and Integrity Information System, FAPIIS; Contractor Performance Assessment Reports System, CPARS; and Past Performance Information Retrieval System, PPIRS; and the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act, FFATA.

“Once the modernization is complete, we will have one homepage with a single sign-on, one powerful search tool, one robust reporting tool and one workspace where users can access the information and tools they need to make, receive and manage federal awards,” according to the new SAM.gov, which is currently in beta.

Three sites have already made the jump: CFDA, WDOL and SAM. The PPIRS site was decommissioned, as its functionality is covered by CPARS.

FedBizOpps is scheduled to make the migration in the first quarter of fiscal 2020—or before the end of the calendar year—along with FPDS and remaining capabilities under the old SAM.gov.  Once on the new SAM.gov, the FedBizOpps name will go away, replaced by a section of the site titled “Contract Opportunities.”

Continue reading at:  Nextgov

Contractors have questions about DOD’s cyber requirements

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The Pentagon is making big moves in an effort to improve cybersecurity for its industrial base, but so far the department’s biggest roadblocks early on may be the same confusion, doubt and uneven compliance from contractors that led to the vulnerabilities in the first place.

Officials from the Department of Defense and the National Institute of Standards and Technology gave updates on two nascent programs at an Aug. 8 Information Security and Privacy Advisory Board meeting: NIST’s new draft cybersecurity guidance for contractor systems deemed high value assets and the Pentagon’s Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) program.

Both are designed to shore up different aspects of DOD’s cybersecurity regime for contractors, and both are causing heartburn among companies who are still unclear about how best to comply.

The NIST draft guidance around high value assets recently went out for public comment earlier this year.  The more than 600 responses reflect confusion about the scope and application of the requirements.

Continue reading at:  FCW.com

U.S. moves to ban Huawei from government contracts

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The Trump administration on Wednesday took a tactical step in its trade confrontation with China, by releasing a rule that restricts government agencies from doing business with Huawei, the giant Chinese maker of telecommunications equipment and smartphones.

The prohibition was mandated by Congress as part of a broader defense bill signed into law last year.  It covers direct purchases of telecom gear and video surveillance equipment and services.  And it extends to other Chinese companies that, like Huawei, have raised security concerns inside the American government, including the telecom equipment maker ZTE and Hikvision, which develops facial-recognition technology.

But Huawei, China’s largest telecom company, has been the main focus of attention for the White House and an on-again, off-again bargaining chip in the administration’s trade battle.

In a statement, Huawei said the White House move was “not unexpected” since it was required by the defense bill.  The Chinese company said it would continue to challenge the ban in court and called it a “trade barrier based on country of origin, invoking punitive action without any evidence of wrongdoing.”

Continue reading at:  The New York Times

GSA plan for one award schedule gets industry thumbs up

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Government contractors see promise in the General Services Administration’s plan to consolidate the current 24 multiple award schedules into a single schedule over the next couple years, according to preliminary results from the agency’s request for information on the plan, released Aug. 1.

The current system requires agencies using the program to purchase certain goods and services from pre-negotiated contracts that have been separated by topic areas, such as human capital, information technology and professional services.

GSA announced in late 2018 that they would begin the process of consolidating the schedules, citing problems with the current system that sometimes require agencies to purchase multiple services off of different schedules to complete a single project.

For example, an agency looking to reform its call center might have to make purchases off of an IT schedule for new technology, the professional services schedule for a consulting solution and the office management schedule for the call center’s furniture and carpeting.  The agency would then have to cobble together the purchases from those separate schedules into a single project.

According to the RFI’s preliminary results, approximately 88 percent of those that responded to the request agreed that the proposed format would benefit both industry and federal agency customers, while 94 percent agreed that the proposed format was clear to understand.

Continue reading at:  Federal Times

Federal contract spending grew 9% in 2018

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Federal contract spending in fiscal 2018 increased for the third straight year to $559 billion, a 9% increase over 2017 spending and the highest level since 2010, when agencies spent $562 billion.

The data, compiled by Bloomberg Government, include prime and unclassified contract spending.  Bloomberg released the findings in the eighth annual BGOV200 report, which ranks the top 200 federal contractors.  The report analyzes market trends, contrators’ performance and other dynamics among the 24 largest federal agencies in 27 purchasing categories during the prior fiscal year.

Among the departments with the biggest gains in contract spending in fiscal 2018 were: Defense, Energy, Homeland Security and Transportation.  Some of the top markets were weapons, professional services, aircraft parts and technology.

The top six companies’ rankings didn’t change from fiscal 2017.  They are: Lockheed Martin Corp, Boeing Co., General Dynamics Corp., Raytheon Co., Northrop Grumman Corp. and McKesson Corp.  Previously ranked 20th in 2017, United Technologies Corp. is seventh in 2018.  All but one of the companies in the top 10 are in the defense industry.

Continue reading at:  Government Executive

These are the top 10 government contractors

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The federal government is one of the world’s largest marketplaces, and while competition is fierce among its key vendors, the top 10 dominate—receiving roughly three of every 10 dollars the federal government awarded in 2018.

“The top five have been pretty steady for the last decade or so,” said Bloomberg Government analyst Daniel Snyder, who recently authored “The BGOV200,” a ranking of the top 200 federal contractors by prime unclassified contracts awarded by federal agencies in fiscal 2018.  This year, as in year’s past, Lockheed Martin (No. 1) , Boeing (No. 2) and General Dynamics (No. 3) round out the top three contractors.

“No surprise in the top five—but we did see that United Technologies (No. 7) increased its obligations by almost $4.9 billion from last year,” Snyder said.  “And Bechtel Group Inc. (No. 16) had its obligations decrease by $1.7 billion in fiscal year 2018 – which pushed them out of the top ten in this year’s report.”

Altogether, of the $559 billion in prime contracts awarded in FY18, the top 10 government contractors received $164.4 billion.

See the Top 10 list at:  Bloomberg Government

Federal Government spent nearly $560 billion on contracts in 2018

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Pentagon spending on federal contracts soared in fiscal year 2018, accounting for about $373 billion of $559 billion in overall contracting spend from federal agencies, according to Bloomberg Government’s 8th annual top 200 contractors report.

The spending by the Pentagon is a $40.5 billion increase from the previous fiscal year and over $90 billion rise since FY2015. Total government spending increased 9 percent from the previous fiscal year, from $512 billion in FY2017.

The $559 billion in FY2018 spending is the most since FY2010, when the government spent $562 billion.

Continue reading at:  Federal Times

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