Georgia Tech Procurement Assistance Center

These are nervous times for contractors

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US DoD logoSpeaking to a room of government contractors recently, Defense Department officials insisted that there is no witch-hunt.

Contrary to industry perception, government overseers are not hammers looking for nails, said Deputy General Counsel for Contractor Responsibility at the Department of the Air Force, Rodney A. Grandon.

Grandon made a case that contractor policing is changing. The emphasis is not on trying to rack up the numbers of suspensions and debarments, he said, but on working preemptively with companies to make sure they have vigorous ethics and compliance programs.

“The focus today is no longer on numbers. The focus today is on contractor responsibility,” he told a federal procurement conference last month in McLean, Virginia, organized by the consulting firm BDO USA.

It is a fact of life that misconduct will occur, so the government is paying more attention to what companies are doing to prevent and respond in such situations, said Grandon. He commended federal contractors that have “invested in very robust advocacy and compliance programs.” The government counts on companies to self-police, he said. “Contractors must have in place procedures and willingness to engage government to take immediate steps when misconduct occurs. Our role is to buy down the risk for our acquisition community so they don’t have to worry that the contractor they’re dealing with has a lack of integrity or past performance problems.”

Keep reading this article at: http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=2172

Move over, FAPIIS – POGO freshens up its contractor database

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The federal government’s largest contractors have paid $25.3 billion in fines and penalties for everything from A to Z: from improper accounting practices to selling the government defective Zylon body armor. These and more than 1,400 other misconduct instances can be found in the Federal Contractor Misconduct Database (FCMD), which has now been updated with fiscal year 2010′s top 100 ranking.  [Note: The FCMD is published by the Project On Government Oversight (POGO), a nonprofit watchdog group.]

The top 100 features 7 new contractors, including international accounting firm Deloitte LLP, package delivery company United Parcel Service (UPS), and linguistic services provider Mission Essential Personnel. The FCMD now includes misconduct information on 160 of the federal government’s largest suppliers of goods and services.

The top 100 contractors received $276 billion in contracts last fiscal year,
accounting for slightly more than half of the $536 billion in contracts awarded
that year. As of today, these 100 contractors have accumulated 821 misconduct
instances. Thirty-eight of the top 100 have zero or one instance, a reminder
that misconduct need not be accepted as a cost of doing business with the
federal government.

As has occurred in the past, the USAspending.gov data on which the top 100 ranking is based
contains errors. Therefore, you will see double listings for Booz Allen
Hamilton, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman.

Among the instances you will find in the FCMD:

POGO’s FCMD complements the federal government’s contractor responsibility
database, the Federal Awardee Performance and Integrity Information System, or
FAPIIS. POGO was pleased to discover the recent addition of several new useful
features to FAPIIS, which is on its way to becoming an indispensable resource
that strengthens accountability over the more than $1 trillion in taxpayer money
spent each year on federal contracts and grants.

– Neil Gordon is a POGO Investigator.  Published Sept. 29, 2011 at http://pogoblog.typepad.com/pogo/2011/09/move-over-fapiis-pogo-freshens-up-its-contractor-misconduct-database.html.

Former federal contractor gets jail time for falsifying immigration records

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A former contractor working as a records custodian at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has been sentenced to five and a half years in jail for doctoring computer files to help illegal aliens obtain “legal” passports, Justice Department officials announced this week. The case reflects a larger problem the agency has experienced with personnel who have manipulated computer systems at various USCIS centers, according to internal documents and a former information technology manager. Federal investigators recently discovered that plans for an ongoing project to computerize the processing of immigration forms, which is supposed to enhance fraud detection, failed to address insider threats.

According to federal district court papers reviewed by Nextgov, Richard Abapo Quidilla, 39, of Pico Rivera, Calif., deleted the names, birth dates and other personal data of naturalized citizens in a secure database and substituted the corresponding information of illegal immigrants. He pleaded guilty in March to charges of computer fraud, procurement of citizenship unlawfully and aggravated identity theft, U.S. Attorney Laura E. Duffy said.

During the time Quidilla perpetrated the crimes, between Dec. 31, 2009, and Oct. 28, 2010, he was under contract with Dell Perot Systems at the USCIS San Diego office, according to the plea agreement. The government assigned him a user identification code to access the system he admitted to tampering with. Quidilla then assigned the alien registration ID numbers of nearly 30 naturalized citizens to about 30 illegal immigrants in a way that would trick anyone searching the database using the immigrants’ personal information to believe they were naturalized.

At least two illegal immigrants used their false ID numbers and citizenship statuses to get passports, according to the plea. One of them paid Quidilla at least $1,300 for cribbing the information; the other gave him at least $4,100.

When asked whether Quidilla obtained the proper clearances and passed background checks to manage immigration records, Lori Haley, an Immigration, Customs and Enforcement spokeswoman, said she could not comment because the incident is under investigation at ICE.

Quidilla’s supervisors did not know he posed a risk, Dell officials said. “Dell had no knowledge of the former employee’s criminal behavior prior to his arrest,” company spokeswoman Caitlin Carroll said. “Dell holds its team members to the highest standards, and has a zero-tolerance policy for unethical behavior.”

This is not the first time USCIS employees have orchestrated citizenship scams — and auditors are warning that a troubled $2.4 billion project to automate immigration paperwork lacks controls to guard against future internal wrongdoers, according to a report released earlier this year by the Homeland Security Department Inspector General’s Office.

Frank Deffer, assistant IG for information technology audits, listed the initiative, called Transformation, and its susceptibility to insider threats as among the “most prevalent, high-impact areas of concern” in an assessment of steps the agency is taking to protect IT systems and data against unauthorized use by employees and contractors. “Insiders at USCIS have perpetrated fraud in the past,” his audit stated. “USCIS insiders are capable of granting legal residency or citizenship status to someone who poses a national security risk to the United States.”

Separately, a serious incident report obtained by Nextgov shows, in 2008, USCIS officials discovered that employees within the Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate — hired to ensure dangerous individuals do not receive immigration rights — hooked up a nongovernment computer to an external Internet connection at a Vermont center that handles visas for victims of violence and human trafficking, allowing staff to potentially extract or import data to commit identity theft.

Spokesman Christopher Bentley said the overwhelming majority of USCIS staff perform their jobs honestly and with a deep commitment to public service.

“USCIS demands that our employees maintain the highest level of integrity and professionalism,” he said. “USCIS has zero tolerance for criminal activity and employee misconduct, and will take appropriate action to pursue illegal or unethical activity by every means at our disposal.”

— by Aliya Sternstein – NextGov – 06/02/11 – http://www.nextgov.com/nextgov/ng_20110602_9794.php?oref=rss?zone=NGtoday

Contractor performance database goes public in April

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A new government database that tracks contractor misconduct and performance, previously available only to federal officials, is expected to be made public by April 15, Government Executive has learned.

In one of the most dramatic steps to date in shining a light on the conduct of firms that do business with the government, the General Services Administration will open its Federal Awardee Performance and Integrity Information System — otherwise known as FAPIIS — to public scrutiny within the next three months, GSA’s Senior Procurement Executive Joseph Neurauter said in an interview on Thursday.

A provision in the wartime supplemental appropriations bill, sponsored by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and signed into law by President Obama in July 2010, mandated that GSA disclose on a public website all information in FAPIIS, with the exception of past performance evaluations.

The bill did not provide a deadline for publicizing the information, which now is accessible only to a handful of government officials, lawmakers and contractors that are listed in the database.

“This is a good thing because it gives more transparency,” said Neurauter, who also serves as GSA’s suspension and debarment official. “That’s really what we are about. The more information that you can legally and within reason make available to the public, the better.”

FAPIIS, used by federal contracting officials since April, culls information dating back five years from a number of disparate federal databases and government records.

The database includes criminal, civil and administrative proceedings against suppliers in connection with federal awards; past performance evaluations; records of suspensions and debarments; administrative agreements issued in lieu of suspension or debarment; nonresponsibility determinations; contracts that were terminated for fault and defective price determinations.

And in a new development, the database also will include instances when a company’s behavior might have put its employees in harm’s way.

A provision in the fiscal 2011 Defense Authorization Act requires department contracting officials to publicly disclose cases when a procurement official denied or reduced a contractor’s award fee because of a company’s reckless or negligent behavior. The database also will include a determination of fault by Defense Department leadership.

For contracts above the simplified acquisition threshold of $150,000, federal contracting and grant officers are required to check FAPIIS before making a responsibility determination. The new public site, Neurauter said, will be searchable and user-friendly.

While much of the information available in FAPIIS is already publicly available on myriad federal websites, the data has never before been comprehensively assembled for public viewing.

On Monday, Jan. 24, an interim rule is expected to be published in the Federal Register informing the contractor community that FAPIIS data soon will be made public, Neurauter said. The public will have 60 days to comment on the notice.

But contractor officials already are raising concerns that opening the database to the public could jeopardize the integrity of the acquisition process and potentially risk the disclosure of private information.

“Making this data public opens the door to all kinds of misperceptions, misunderstandings and even mischief,” said Stan Soloway, president of the Professional Services Council, an industry trade association.

GSA officials are aware of industry’s concerns and are taking steps to redact data prohibited by the 1974 Privacy Act or that concerns a contractor’s proprietary information. Other information also could be withheld based on pending litigation, according to Neurauter.

“We can’t mindlessly put things in there,” he said. “We have to give it thought and consideration and understand there is a balance of competing regulatory and statutory interests that we have to be mindful of.”

Soloway, however, is concerned that the administration has yet to develop governmentwide business rules spelling out how contracting officials should use the information in FAPIIS. For example, the government has not provided guidance to procurement officials regarding how much weight a years-old tax discrepancy or equal employment violation should have in a company’s post-award responsibility determination.

“We are looking for clarity on how this information is going to be used,” Soloway said.

The Federal Acquisition Institute has developed a tutorial detailing the purpose of FAPIIS and the types of data it will include. The site is available at http://www.fai.gov/FAPIIS/trailer/module.htm.

 – By Robert Brodsky – GovExec.com – January 21, 2011

Contractors raise concerns about making public government database on firms’ performance

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A new law will make public a database on contractors’ past behavior that is now available only to the government, and some contracting groups worry the information could be misinterpreted.

The Federal Awardee Performance and Integrity Information System, dubbed FAPIIS, was established through 2008 legislation to ensure the government, before making major awards to contractors, is aware of past problems such as criminal convictions, fines, suspensions and contracts terminated due to default.

Supplemental war funding legislation signed by President Obama earlier this summer mandated that all of the information — with the exception of past performance reviews — be made publicly available on a Web site.

The Project on Government Oversight, a nonprofit organization that has operated its own contractor misconduct database since 2002, lauded the decision. Neil Gordon, an investigator with the organization, said the public database will provide a window into the government’s decision-making processes.

“We’ve always thought that a database that contains information about federal contractors will, first of all, help the government make more responsible contracting decisions, but also help the public be able to better track how the money is spent,” Gordon said.

But the Professional Services Council, an industry trade group, said the data might be misinterpreted by users unfamiliar with contracting, including Congress, reporters and public interest groups.

“Government officials, contracting officers and source selection people have experience evaluating past-performance information and making judgments about data,” said Alan Chvotkin, executive vice president and counsel at the PSC. “The database will be used for a lot of purposes having nothing to do with what it’s originally intended to do.”

Gordon dismissed those concerns, noting that a lot of the information is already public. The database, he said, just gathers it together to be more accessible.

The law tasks the General Services Administration with making the database available. The GSA said it does not yet have a date for the public site’s rollout, but is working with the administration on implementation.

— By Marjorie Censer, Monday, August 23, 2010, The Washington Post  

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