Georgia Tech Procurement Assistance Center

HUD is hunting for vendors for next phase of ‘centers of excellence’

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The Housing and Urban Development Department is bringing on vendors to help the agency overhaul its customer service operations, drive cloud adoption and expand its use of data analytics.

HUD and the General Services Administration on May 17th released draft solicitations for the second phase of the department’s Centers of Excellence program.  The high-profile initiative offers agencies the opportunity to improve existing IT systems and lay the groundwork for new technologies with extra assistance from GSA and the White House.

HUD was the second agency selected to participate in the program, after the Agriculture Department.  On Friday, GSA kicked off the third iteration of the program at the Office of Management and Budget.

In phase one of the HUD program, which began in September, government officials worked with industry to determine how to best address issues in key facets of the department’s IT infrastructure.  In phase two, the agency will recruit vendors to implement those solutions.

“We are excited to begin this next phase of our modernization efforts,” HUD Chief Operating Officer Ralph Gaines said in a statement. “We’re looking forward to seeing how these efforts will further transform the agency and make it more accountable to our customers.”

Continue reading at:  Nextgov

Offeror’s winning bid of $0 was acceptable, says GAO

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Under certain circumstances, the winning bidder on a fixed-price contract may offer $0.00.

In a recent decision, LCPtracker, Inc.; eMars, Inc., B-410752.3 et al (Sept. 3, 2015), the GAO held an offeror submitting a zero-dollar offer (that is, an offer for $0.00) was eligible to receive a fixed-price contract because both the Government and the contractor would receive benefits under the contract.

HUDIn LCPtracker, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) sent a solicitation for web-based payroll tracking services to three small businesses: eMars, Inc., LCPtracker, Inc. and Elation Systems, Inc. The successful offeror was to provide web-based services for over 6,000 users dispersed throughout the nation. The solicitation did not request technical proposal submissions, only price quotations. HUD planned to pay for the entire service, which meant offerors would not be able to charge fees to third party users.

Keep reading this article at: http://smallgovcon.com/gaobidprotests/offerors-winning-bid-of-0-00-was-acceptable-says-gao/

Federal programs to aid entrepreneurs overlap

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Agency efforts to support private entrepreneurs are ineffectual and fragmented, according to Government Accountability Office research on 52 programs in such departments as Agriculture, Commerce and Housing and Urban Development.

In a paper dated Aug. 23, auditors identified overlap among initiatives to offer grants, loans and technical training to businesses and found that too few agencies track the assistance they provide, resulting in a failure of 19 programs to meet performance goals.

The report said Agriculture and the Small Business Administration, for instance, “entered into a formal agreement in 2010 to coordinate their efforts to support businesses in rural areas; however, the agencies’ programs that can support startup businesses — such as USDA’s Rural Business Enterprise Grant program and SBA’s Small Business Development Centers — have yet to determine roles and responsibilities, find ways to leverage each other’s resources, or establish compatible policies and procedures.”

Keep reading this article at: http://www.govexec.com/contracting/2012/08/federal-programs-aid-entrepreneurs-overlap/57677/

HUD responds to attacks on block grant program

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The Housing and Urban Development Department on Friday moved to improve monitoring of a key block grant program for affordable home construction, following charges of fraud, delays and mismanagement aired by the media, Congress and the HUD inspector general.

A proposed rule published in Friday’s Federal Register would tighten state obligations for oversight in the HOME Investment Partnerships Program, the largest federal block grant to state and local governments designed to boost the stock of available low-income housing.

“The HOME program is a success story for housing low-income Americans and creating jobs,” HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan said in a statement on the program that was created in 1992.  “However, there’s more we can do to improve performance and accountability. Through these new steps, we want to expand HOME’s impact and ensure that every dollar is used smartly to help families afford their homes.”

The proposed rule would require state and local governments to strengthen their oversight of construction projects, develop a system for assessing the relative risk of projects and more closely monitor HOME-funded subrecipients. Block grant recipients also would be asked to assess the capacity and long-term viability of housing project developers, and they would be made to better track construction progress and report results more frequently. In addition, the proposed rule would establish more precise deadlines for completing projects or for actions to address delays.

The Washington Post earlier this year published a series showing that dozens of projects funded under HOME nationwide had been abandoned or delayed. The series was mentioned in a September report from the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development and Related Agencies, which stated that “HUD has done a poor job in some instances of overseeing grantees and that some grantees have squandered and misappropriated large amounts of federal taxpayer dollars.” The reported also said, “the block grants are especially susceptible to waste, fraud, and abuse because, by design, they are flexible dollars given to communities to undertake a wide range of community development activities with little input or constraint by the federal government.”

On Nov. 2, acting Deputy HUD Inspector General John McCarty testified to Congress that his office had conducted 60 audits of the HOME program during the past five years. “We believe that HUD’s information systems used to administer the HOME program are incapable of producing complete and reconcilable audit trails throughout the entire grant life cycle and are unable to produce reports which would facilitate timely identification of fraud waste and abuse in the programs,” he said.

He said such fraud, which is “facilitated through opportunity, desperation and greed,” is often “motivated by ease of access to the funds and by their ability to deceive program oversight by manipulating the grant procedures.”

The committee soon afterward approved a final conference report that cut for the HOME program’s funding by 37.5 percent.

Sheila Crowley, president and chief executive officer of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, said that “while the Washington Post series certainly encouraged Congress to make deep cuts to the HOME program, it’s hard to say how much it influenced the rule, as HUD has been considering accountability reforms for a year or more.” Overall, her group considers the proposed rule to be positive, despite some wariness of on-site inspections.

— by Charles S. Clark – Government Executive – December 19, 2011 – http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=49605&dcn=e_gvet.

Cloud is next step for HUD’s IT infrastructure

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The Department of Housing and Urban Development already outsourced much of its network infrastructure under its HITS contract. Now the agency wants to take its infrastructure one step further and put it in the cloud.

HUD held its second industry day June 24 for its HUDNet program, which eventually will replace the $800 million HITS program, run by Lockheed Martin and Hewlett-Packard.

“HUDNet is a program that is looking at all the constituent pieces of the HITS program, all of its management pieces, the management framework around HITS,” said Mark Day, HUD’s chief technology officer, at a recent conference. “We are in the acquisition strategy phase. There will be RFPs coming out of this, but I can’t go much further than that.”

Day said the difference between outsourced or managed service contract and cloud is the elasticity. He said in a sense, HUD is in a private cloud that is virtualized, highly scalable and fairly agile.

“What is not there in a managed services contract is the business model of cloud. We do not have the elasticity. Prices do not go down when we use less,” Day said. “Managed services is what you might consider the high water mark price. If we ever bought that much of the infrastructure, we pay for that much of the infrastructure. In a cloud, you go up and down as your needs change. That is really what we are doing. It’s not a technical move for us. It’s a business model move in the procurement realm.”

Along with the two industry days, HUD issued a request for information in February.

In the RFI, the agency detailed five main areas, including hosting of its infrastructure in the cloud, self provisioning of capacity as needed and end-to-end monitoring of performance.

HUD is accepting comments, suggestions and recommendations on how to proceed through July 22.

HUD awarded Lockheed and EDS, which HP eventually bought, the HITS contract in 2005 to provide essentially all of HUD’s IT infrastructure, information processing, telecommunications, storage, enterprise middleware, operating systems, end user computing and communications devices (except desktop telephony) and related needs on a nationwide, agencywide basis, as organized around 24 core functions reflecting HUD’s various service needs.

No matter the approach HUD eventually chooses for its infrastructure, Day said the agency will need to do a few things, starting with improving the skills of its workforce.

“Now I need very savvy people to oversee that outsourced work. They need to understand IT, they need to understand metrics and management and remote management, if you will,” he said. “And that is an interesting grouping of skills when in fact they will never do actual IT work for you. So how do you get the right people with both a savvy understanding of the subject and an understanding of the management of that subject and how to measure that subject? It’s an interesting problem.”

Day said HUD is looking at career ladders for employees to gain both of these skills.

Metrics is another challenge for HUD. He said the TechStat sessions has helped ensure the agency has the right ones for a limited number of high priority programs.

“We have used TechStat to inform the interest level of our programs and others in doing our internal approach,” he said. “When they see they’ve got to do in front of OMB, it’s very easy to decide we ought to do it internally first. We ought to have the practice right. We ought to have the answers right. And we ought to in fact emulate that because it has driven good decision making.”

Day added TechStat sessions helped HUD focus in on the projects and metrics that really matter the most and how do they drive the agency’s mission. HUD culled their list down to seven from 38 major IT projects.

“The ones that are the same are the obvious ones schedule, budget and time and that type of thing. But really the other metric most people are not doing well is what is the business outcome for this project and how well are we actually meeting the business outcome? And if we are off schedule, what is the opportunity loss? If we are overbudget, what is the cost of that budget compared to the return on investment for that project?”

He added it’s a matter of figuring out the business goal of each project and then measuring what success looks like.

Day said TechStat also has helped HUD instill more rigor into the oversight of their IT programs.

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— by Jason Miller, Executive Editor, Federal News Radio – July 5, 2011 – Copyright 2011 by FederalNewsRadio.com. All Rights Reserved. Published at http://federalnewsradio.com/?sid=2446919&nid=35

HUD sued for refusing to release Lockheed Martin subcontracting data

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The American Small Business League (ASBL) has filed suit against the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) after the agency refused to release subcontracting reports on a contract awarded to Lockheed Martin.

The ASBL filed suit in United States District Court, Northern District of California.(http://www.asbl.com/documents/complaint_lockheedmartin_sub_report.pdf)

The case was filed after HUD repeatedly refused to respond to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by ASBL for documents related to Lockheed Martin’s compliance with small business subcontracting goals.

In its suit, ASBL states that it believes the information contained in Lockheed’s subcontracting reports may show that the contractor is not complying with its small business goals.  Additionally, the ASBL says it’s concerned the reports may indicate that Lockheed and HUD cooperated in an effort to circumvent federal law, which requires 23 percent of all federal contracts to be awarded to small businesses.

The ASBL’s most recent lawsuit against HUD represents yet another legal action originating from ASBL efforts to gather information on the subcontracting practices of a series of major government prime contractors.  If validated, ASBL’s actions could lead to litigation filed under the False Claims Act, and Section 16(d) of the Small Business Act.

The ASBL’s suit against HUD is the 14th lawsuit filed by the organization against the Obama Administration in pursuit of publicly releasable documents regarding government contracting programs.

In 1994, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that subcontracting reports are releasable to the public, and do not contain trade secret or proprietary information.

The ASBL contends that despite continually promising the most transparent administration in history, the Obama Administration has actually been among the least transparent.  In early 2010, the Associated Press conducted a review of FOIA reports filed by 17 major agencies, and found across the board increases in the number of rejections. While the federal government as a whole received fewer

FOIA requests during the first year of the Obama Administration, agencies increasingly said “no” to requesters looking for public documents. (http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9EFRPJG0)

“I can’t blame them for trying to withhold this information because it shows that the Obama Administration is failing to address widespread abuse in small business contracting programs.  Every day, corporate giants are circumventing their small business subcontracting goals, and every day more than $800 million in small business contracts are diverted to corporate giants,” ASBL President Lloyd Chapman said. “That is why we have to go to federal court for every piece of paper regarding small business contracting programs.  They are treating this stuff like it’s top secret.”

 

City of Marietta accepting applications for small-business grant program

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If you own a small business and are looking to move to Marietta, GA or expand your existing small business in an area of the city that is undergoing redevelopment, you may be eligible to receive financial assistance from the Marietta Growth Fund as part of a small-business grant program. Marietta’s Economic Development Division is accepting applications for the small-business grant program, and the deadline to submit is September 15.

Businesses must be located within the city limits of Marietta to receive the funding, Marietta economic development manager Beth Sessoms said. “The grant program is geared toward job creation for low- to moderate-income individuals.” Businesses must pay salaries higher than the minimum wage to be eligible to receive funding, she said.

Business owners need to have an investment of their own in the program, Sessoms said. “We provide a gap financing tool for businesses through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.”

About the Marietta Growth Fund

The Marietta Growth Fund provides assistance to qualified Marietta businesses by supplementing traditional commercial loans or other financial resources with additional funds for new business or expansion.

The Fund provides a mechanism to “close the deal” when traditional commercial loans and other financial resources are insufficient to capitalize the business. The Fund encourages business revitalization and employment opportunities for low-to-moderate income individuals who live in the city limits of Marietta.

Read the Marietta Growth Fund Brochure here.

Marietta’s dedication to redevelopment in the city is a goal City Council established as part of its vision statement.

For more information, e-mail Marietta’s Economic Development manager Beth Sessoms at bsessoms@mariettaga.gov.

— Source: City of Marietta, GA – Aug. 26, 2010.

Housing officials said they erred

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Los Angeles Housing department officials admitted Thursday they had erred in awarding a contract to build housing for seniors and the homeless to a firm under investigation by federal authorities.

Controller Wendy Greuel, in an audit requested by housing officials, said the department failed to adequately review an application from Bonnie Brae Village Partners to discover one of its partners, CDR Financial Planning, was under federal investigation.

As a result, the 92-unit building at 208 S. Bonnie Brae Ave. that was completed last December could not be opened because federal officials refused to issue Section 8 housing vouchers needed to cover the cost of the building.

“Once the Housing Department discovered this, they proceeded with the project, which put the city at tremendous financial risk,” Greuel said.

CDR Financial was indicted by a federal grand jury last October on accusations of rigging bids in which it was alleged firms made kickbacks to the firm to win government contracts. CDR officials have denied any wrongdoing.

The apartment complex was completed on time and on budget, officials said, but could not be opened because of the problems in getting federal approval of housing vouchers because of the inquiry into CDR.

Housing General Manager Doug Guthrie acknowledged the department had made a mistake, but said new procedures have been put in place to deal with similar problems in the future.

“We take these findings and recommendations to heart and we have already started to make changes,” Guthrie said. “Our primary goal now is to fix the problems that allowed this to go through and our priority now is to get that housing filled with the people it was meant to help.”

Contra Costa Times – April 8, 2010 – © 2010 Bay Area News Group

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