Georgia Tech Procurement Assistance Center

The government’s historic spending spree continues

By

Driven largely by the Defense Department, the federal government’s discretionary spending spiked to a seven-year high in fiscal 2018, with agencies obligating more than $554 billion for products and services, up $100 billion from 2015.

According to official spending data from the Government Accountability Office, the Defense Department accounted for $358 billion in contract obligations while civilian agencies, like the Veterans Affairs and Homeland Security departments, obligated $195 billion.

The government closed the 2018 fiscal year on a massive spending spree—due in part to funding increases after a delayed budget agreement—and early fiscal 2019 spending data indicates the government isn’t slowing down its contract spending.

Spending data tabulated by the Professional Services Council illustrates the spending uptick.

Continue reading at:  Nextgov

VA fails again to apply the ‘rule of two’

By

In June 6, 2019, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a decision in the matter of Veterans4You, Inc., deciding that the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) must apply the “Rule of Two” even when it procures goods and services through other government agencies.

In the VA context, the Rule of Two is the commonly known name for a statutory provision of a 2006 amendment to the Veterans Benefits, Health Care, and Information Technology Act requiring that “the [VA] shall award contracts on the basis of competition restricted to small business concerns owned and controlled by veterans” where the VA “has a reasonable expectation that two or more [such concerns] will submit offers,” and “the award can be made at a fair and reasonable price that offers best value to the United States.”  As discussed in an alert in 2018, VA has struggled to reconcile this mandate with myriad other mandates establishing preferential sources for government procurements.

Continue reading at:  Pillsbury

GAO infographic shows how the federal government spent money in 2018

By

With tax season over, now is a good time to look at how the government uses your tax dollars.

About 40% of the government’s discretionary spending goes to contracts for goods and services covering everything from health care to hand grenades.  In fiscal year 2018, the federal government spent more than $550 billion on these contracts, an increase of more $100 billion from 2015.  This increase is largely driven by spending on national defense.

GAO has recently published an infographic that shows more details on how federal contracting dollars are spent across the federal government—including which agencies obligated the most funds, what they bought, and whether the contracts were competed.

Continue reading at the:  GAO Watch Blog

Agencies agree to do more to identify contractors with tax debts

By

A sizable portion of the “tax gap” of revenues that go uncollected by the Internal Revenue Service is attributable to current and would-be federal contractors.

Though the IRS is prohibited from sharing such information with agency procurement staff, contracting officers are supposed to examine the self-reporting of tax debts from the companies to which they give awards.  That is not always occurring, according to a Government Accountability Office report released on Wednesday addressed to leaders of the House Oversight and Reform and the Ways and Means committees.

“Considering prospective contractors’ reported qualifying federal tax debt—in accordance with federal regulations—helps ensure federal agencies comply with federal appropriations law, supports the integrity of the contracting process, and protects the interests of the government,” GAO noted in its summary of a two-year review of five agencies’ handling of selected contracts in fiscal 2015-2016.

Continue reading at:  Government Executive

GAO: Past performance should relate to solicited services

By

Past performance is an important evaluation factor in many solicitations.  Essentially, it allows an agency to guess as to the likelihood of an offeror’s successful performance under a solicitation by looking to its history of performance on similar projects in the past.

GAO recently confirmed it is “axiomatic” that past performance examples should align with the solicitation’s requirements.  If an offeror submits unrelated examples, it risks a downgraded past performance score.

Continue reading the article at: SmallGovCon

New OHA decision regarding class waivers of the non-manufacturer rule creates uncertainty

By

Those familiar with Federal procurements know the general rule: If you submit a proposal against a solicitation despite disagreeing with one of its provisions, you usually waive the right to challenge that provision in the future.  That rule applies to bid protests at both the Government Accountability Office (“GAO”) and the Court of Federal Claims.  In Size Appeal of Cypher Analytics, Inc. d/b/a Crown Point Systems, SBA No. SIZ-5986 (2019), the Small Business Administration’s (“SBA”) Office of Hearings and Appeals (“OHA”) recently showed that the general rule does not necessarily apply to SBA size protests.

Continue reading the article at: Government Contracts Insights

Renewed focus on contractor business system reviews

By

According to a recent U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, the Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA) and the Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA) have taken certain steps to improve the contractor business system (CBS) review process and are forecasting that CBS reviews will increase significantly over the next four years. Contractor business systems include a contractor’s accounting, earned value management, estimating, purchasing, material management, and property management systems.

These systems require contractors to maintain internal controls that, as GAO noted, “act as the first line of defense against fraud, waste and abuse of federal funding.” Given their importance, the renewed focus on ensuring CBS reviews are conducted in a timely and consistent manner is not surprising, and contractors should prepare for a new wave of audit activity.

Past Challenges to Completing CBS Reviews

In its report, GAO identified persistent challenges that have prevented DCAA and DCMA from performing consistent and timely CBS reviews. One key factor for DCAA is its focus on eliminating the backlog of incurred cost audits, which determine whether contractor costs are allowable prior to closing out the contract. GAO found that as a result of prioritizing incurred cost audits, Contracting Officers maintained CBS determinations as adequate even though the systems had not been audited in many years. GAO further found that lacking a mechanism to track CBS audits, DCMA and DCAA did not always comply with requirements to report CBS deficiencies or did not report the deficiencies within required timeframes.

Keep reading this article at: https://governmentcontractsnavigator.com/2019/03/21/renewed-focus-on-contractor-business-system-reviews/

GSA rescinds all awards made on $15 billion Alliant 2 Small Business contract

By

The government rescinded all awards made in the $15B Alliant 2 Small Business governmentwide acquisition contract for IT services procurement last week.

The move follows an order from the Court of Federal Claims that the General Services Administration must rescore every submission it received to address errors raised in protest from Virginia-based technology company, Citizant Inc.

The Alliant 2 SB is part of one of the largest federal IT opportunities of the decade. In February 2018, GSA announced its award to 81 small business, which federal agencies would be able to access for integrated IT solutions around their “current and evolving needs.” After the announcement, protests from dissatisfied bidders ensued.

In March 2018, Citizant, Inc. protested the bid to the Government Accountability Office. GAO dismissed the file in May 2018, but Citizant took complaints to court and won this week, resulting in the rescission.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.nextgov.com/cio-briefing/2019/03/gsa-rescinds-all-awards-made-15b-alliant-2-small-business-contract/155869/

Fed watchdog wants DoD to have better insight into contractors’ safety records

By

The U.S. Government Accountability Office, a congressional “watchdog,” has issued recommendations to the U.S. Department of Labor’s OSHA and the Department of Defense aimed at helping them better track defense contractor safety violations. GAO was tasked with reviewing safety and health records of contractors and how they were handled by DoD, the largest contracting agency in the government, with $320 billion in contracts in 2017.

The GAO report noted that OSHA’s inspection data does not include a corporate identification number, which means “website users will likely have difficulty obtaining accurate information on individual companies’ previous violations,” such as whether the violations occurred on defense projects. DoD also may be missing opportunities to consider a company’s safety performance when awarding contracts, it continued, because only a few parts of the agency rate contractors in this category.

GAO recommends that OSHA consider requiring a corporate identification number as part of the information it collects during an inspection, and that DoD officials use OSHA’s website to find contractor safety information and consider requiring a safety performance rating for contractors engaging in construction and other risky types of work.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.constructiondive.com/news/fed-watchdog-wants-dod-to-have-better-insight-into-contractors-safety-reco/550792/

2018 bid protests: Strong success rate at GAO continues while protest numbers spike in court

By

Protesters remained active and fairly successful in their challenges to agencies’ procurement actions at the Government Accountability Office (GAO) in 2018, while protests at the Court of Federal Claims spiked.

According to Ralph White, Managing Associate General Counsel for Procurement Law at GAO, presenting at West’s Government Contracts Year In Review Conference, the number of protests at GAO held steady, despite the mid-year implementation of a $350 filing fee. A previous blog post with GAO statistics can be found here. White credited a number of competing factors with the steady numbers.  The filing fee, enhanced Defense Department debriefings and the suspension of one particularly active “nuisance protester” likely worked to reduce the number of protests, while the highly competitive procurement environment, increased DoD spending, an increase in the dollar threshold for GAO’s task order jurisdiction and the steady but significant success rate for protesters worked to increase the number of protests.

That success rate – the number of protests where the protester sees some kind of remedy, whether from a sustain decision or agency corrective action – remains around 44 percent, similar to previous years, White said. For the third consecutive year, not a single agency refused to follow a recommendation issued by GAO.

The Court of Federal Claims saw a marked increase in protests in 2018 – 179, compared to 129 in 2017, a 40 percent increase.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.mondaq.com/article.asp?articleid=785248

Contracting News

Read More

Contracting Tips

Read More

GTPAC News

Read More

Georgia Tech News

Read More