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How to leverage the government’s focus on transformation

October 25, 2018 By Andrew Smith

Vendors with truly transformational technologies may soon find more receptive ears in the public sector, as senior IT executives wrestle with topics from acquisition reform to creating an environment that will attract the workforce of tomorrow into today’s government.

In late August, a number of public and private sector officials met in DC for a series of brief conversations on government IT and procurement, focusing on transformation. These conversations considered how to use innovation for everything from protecting critical assets to reforming acquisition methods.

Three key conversations dealt with how to consolidate procurement schedules, collaboration for technology modernization, and making government more attractive to younger prospective employees.

Keep reading this article at: https://washingtontechnology.com/articles/2018/09/14/insights-shaker-government-transformation.aspx

Filed Under: Contracting Tips Tagged With: acquisition reform, government reform, GSA, GSA Schedule, IT, procurement reform, regulatory reform, solutions, technology, Technology Modernization Fund

The right thing is also the hard thing in federal contracting

August 8, 2017 By Andrew Smith

Inputs or outcomes?

For technology services company CEOs like me, that’s a no-brainer. Results are the lifeblood of industry, and leaders are held to account if they fail to deliver them. My counterparts in the public sector would surely agree, especially those in the federal acquisition business, who work tirelessly to produce better, more timely results.

And yet, federal service contracts remain predominantly structured to emphasize the delivery levels of input over mission outcomes.

The current government service acquisition model — based on labor hours or staffing levels — is obsolete. The model lacks agility and flexibility, leading to cost increases, limited innovation, and lackluster mission performance. President Trump acknowledged as much in a recent interview: “Time and material means you’re going to get your [butt] kicked. Who ever heard of time and material?”

Of course, acquisition reform has long been a goal for Congress, industry, and the executive branch alike.  Death, taxes, and acquisition reform, right?

Keep reading this article at: http://www.govexec.com/excellence/promising-practices/2017/07/right-thing-also-hard-thing-federal-contracting/139289

Filed Under: Contracting Tips Tagged With: acquisition reform, budget, procurement reform, regulatory reform, time and material

GSA extends comment period on its acquisition regulations, policies, standards and practices until Aug. 14

August 4, 2017 By Andrew Smith

The public comment period has been extended to August 14, 2017 to gain input on acquisition regulations, policies, standards, business practices and guidance issued by the General Services Administration (GSA) across all of its acquisition, disposal, and sales programs, that may be appropriate for repeal, change or replacement.

Notice of this extended comment period was published in the Federal Register at: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2017/07/31/2017-15458/evaluation-of-existing-acquisition-regulations-extension-of-comment-period

The solicitation of comments was spurred by President Trump’s Executive Order (E.O.) 13777, “Enforcing the Regulatory Reform Agenda.”  The E.O. establishes Federal policy to “alleviate unnecessary regulatory burdens” on the American people.  The E.O. directs all federal agencies to establish a Regulatory Task Force (Task Force).  The Task Forces are required to evaluate existing regulations and make recommendations to the agency head regarding their repeal, replacement, or modification.

The mission of the Task Forces is to attempt to identify regulations which:

  1. Eliminate jobs, or inhibit job creation;
  2. Are outdated, unnecessary, or ineffective;
  3. Impose costs which exceed benefits;
  4. Create a serious inconsistency or otherwise interfere with regulator reform initiatives and policies;
  5. Are inconsistent with the requirements of §515 of the Treasury and General Government Appropriations Act of 2001, or the guidance issued pursuant to these requirements, in particular those regulations relying in whole or in part of data, information, or methods not publicly available or are insufficiently transparent to meet the standard of reproducibility; or
  6. Derive from implement E.O.s or other Presidential directives having been subsequently rescinded or substantially modified.

The E.O. requires Task Forces to seek input and other assistance, as permitted by law, from entities significantly affected by Federal regulations, including state, local and tribal governments, small businesses, consumers, non-governmental organizations, and trade associations.

You can submit comments identified by “Notice-MV-2017-01, Evaluation of Existing Acquisition Regulations” by any of the following three methods:

  • Regulations.gov: http://www.regulations.gov. Submit comments via the Federal eRulemaking portal by searching for Notice-MV-2017-01, Evaluation of Existing Acquisition Regulations. Select the link “Comment Now” that corresponds with “Notice-MV-2017-01, Evaluation of Existing Acquisition Regulations.” Follow the instructions provided on the screen. Please include your name, company name (if any), and “Notice-MV-2017-01, Evaluation of Existing Acquisition Regulations” on your attached document.
  • Google form found at: https://goo.gl/forms/GahAhb2aT4MVlREo1.  If you are commenting via the Google form, please note that each regulation or part that you are identifying for repeal, replacement or modification should be entered into the form separately. This will assist GSA in its tracking and analysis of the comments received.
  • Mail: General Services Administration, Regulatory Secretariat Division (MVCB), 1800 F Street NW., Washington, DC 20405.

Filed Under: Contracting News Tagged With: acquisition reform, Federal Register, GSA, procurement reform, reform, regulatory reform

Contractors object to parts of OMB’s agency reporting reductions

July 3, 2017 By Andrew Smith

A group representing 400 services and information technology contractors has asked the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to revamp several of the 59 changes announced on June 15 in its memo on easing the reporting burden on agencies.

The Arlington, Va.-based Professional Services Council, though supportive in general of the budget office’s bid to trim and update administrative requirements, sent a June 22 letter to OMB Director Mick Mulvaney seeking changes in the Trump administration’s handling of accelerated payments to small businesses, acquisition assessments and reporting of agency priority goals.

“If no one is asking for it, maybe it doesn’t have much value to it,” Mulvaney told reporters during the rollout of the June 15 memo to agency heads targeting a portion of what eventually could be 250 management directives that might be “duplicative, obsolete, redundant or low value.”

Keep reading this article at: http://www.govexec.com/contracting/2017/06/contractors-object-parts-ombs-agency-reporting-reductions/139023/

Filed Under: Contracting News Tagged With: federal regulations, industry, OMB, PSC, regulatory reform

What contractors should expect from the Trump administration

February 2, 2017 By Andrew Smith

Government contractors are in the dark about what President Donald Trump’s administration has in store, just like everyone else. But government contract lawyers from the law firm Crowell and Moring are making some speculations.

Robert Burton, partner at Crowell and Moring and former deputy administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy, said the overarching goal of the administration seems to be a more efficient procurement system at much lower prices.

“I think that’s going to translate into increased opportunities for federal contractors, as well as some challenges,” Burton said in a Jan. 26 webinar.

The administration’s top priority, Burton said, seems to be reducing the number of regulatory and compliance burdens contractors function under, especially those imposed by the Obama administration. Burton said he expects the Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces Executive Order, among others, to be rescinded soon.

Keep reading this article at: http://federalnewsradio.com/acquisition-policy/2017/01/contractors-expect-trump-administration/ 

Filed Under: Contracting News Tagged With: Buy American, cybersecurity, Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces, government regulation, OFPP, regulatory reform, small business

Government contracts under the Trump administration

January 30, 2017 By Andrew Smith

President-elect Donald Trump will usher in a new era for government contractors, much like Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton before him.

What impact will the new president and administration have on the field of government contracts?

Click on this link to read about the 10 areas to watch: https://www.law360.com/articles/881546/government-contracts-under-the-trump-administration

Filed Under: Contracting News Tagged With: acquisition workforce, bid protest, budget, contracting opportunities, contracting out, cybersecurity, DoD, infrastructure, outsourcing, priorities, regulatory reform, spending

SBA’s ombudsman holding ‘regulatory fairness roundtable’ in Savannah on June 6

May 30, 2016 By Andrew Smith

SBA logo smallThe Small Business Administration’s National Ombudsman, Earl Gay, will be hosting a Regulatory Fairness Roundtable at the Savannah Civic Center, Monday, June 6, 2016, from 11:00 am  to 1:00 pm.

The role of SBA’s National Ombudsman is to promote a level playing field for small businesses by facilitating practical and timely resolution of federal regulatory enforcement issues, such as repetitive audits or investigations, excessive fines, penalties, threats, retaliation or other unfair federal enforcement actions.

The June 6th roundtable offers small businesses and business advocacy organizations an opportunity to provide input on regulatory fairness situations and issues as well as information on resources and assistance available through the SBA and other federal agencies.

To register to attend this event, email ombudsman@sba.gov or call (202) 205-2417 by Thursday, June 2.  For more information about the Office of the National Ombudsman,  visit www.sba.gov/ombudsman.

Filed Under: GTPAC News Tagged With: federal regulations, government regulation, regulatory reform, SBA, small business

GSA moves forward with overhaul of Multiple Award Schedules

April 20, 2015 By ei2admin

The General Services Administration is moving forward with its plan to overhaul the Multiple Award Schedules, putting into action recommendations from the agency’s 2010 Multiple Award Schedules Advisory Panel, says an April 13 blog post by GSA Senior Procurement Executive Jeffrey Koses.

“The $33 billion program now demands transformation in order to maintain its status as a best acquisition solution in a fast-changing marketplace,” Koses says.

The transformation will include reducing price variability, minimizing burdensome regulations and processes and introducing additional flexibilities, the GSA blog post says.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.fiercegovernment.com/story/gsa-moves-forward-overhaul-multiple-award-schedules/2015-04-13

Read GSA’s complete blog post at: http://gsablogs.gsa.gov/gsablog/2015/04/13/gsa-seeks-to-transform-the-multiple-awards-schedule-program-to-deliver-better-value/

Filed Under: Contracting News Tagged With: acquisition reform, GSA, GSA Schedule, MAS, multiple award schedule, pricing, procurement reform, regulatory reform, Schedule, Schedules

DOD needs simpler contracting processes, lawmakers told

March 30, 2012 By ei2admin

Congress and the Defense Department need to simplify the department’s confusing and burdensome acquisition regulations in order to make the jobs of the acquisition workforce and contractors easier, the House Armed Services Committee recommended in a new report.

In one recommendation, the report says DOD and Congress should embark on a comprehensive review of laws and regulations related to procurement. They then should attempt to amend or even repeal outdated regulations. In doing so, officials should consider whether a rule has had unintended consequences that outweigh its original purpose.

“This effort should be undertaken with an eye to simplifying and streamlining all aspects of the acquisition process and reducing the negative cost and schedule impacts,” according to the report released March 20.

The House committee’s Panel on Business Challenges Within the Defense Industry released the report after discussing acquisition issues with more than 150 people from government, industry, think tanks and academia.

The panel learned in those discussions that the acquisition rules are constantly changing and are extremely complicated. The result is unnecessary complexity, confusion, and poor execution, which only furthers challenges for the acquisition workforce, according to the report.

The Office of Management and Budget urged agencies on March 20 to take similar steps in an effort to avoid duplication among regulations. It even urged agency officials to talk to contractors and other experts before they issue a proposed rule.

DOD’s acquisition rules are off-putting to some companies, the panel wrote in its report.

“The plethora of regulations specific to government and defense contracting dissuades many companies from competing for government contracts,” the panel found.

The complexities also make it tough for the department’s acquisition workforce, which is going through a slow rebuilding process. Employees need a lot of training to understand the ins and outs of the acquisitions regulations and manage complex procurements, the panel wrote.

The workforce took a hit in the 1990s with a major reduction in its numbers. Nowadays, defense officials are attempting to rebuild it. They have hired a lot of new employees, dubbed by the panel as a “new-hire bulge.” Meanwhile many senior members are eligible for retirement.

“These parallel bulges constitute a ‘bathtub effect’ as mid-career personnel are not abundant enough to adequately replace the retirement bulge, nor provide for enough on-hands mentorship to the new-hire bulge,” the panel wrote.

DOD’s training now is very important, the panel added. Maturity in the job and higher education are keys to a strong workforce. It’s more than numbers.

Higher education equips acquisition workers with complex skill sets in finance, systems engineering, logistics, and operations management needed to administer large contracts and manage long-term technology projects.

In President Barack Obama’s fiscal 2013 budget proposal, DOD requested $374 million in its acquisition workforce development fund for recruiting and hiring acquisition and only $120 million, or less than a third, for training and development of the workforce, the panel points out.

“Just as it takes many years to develop a military leader capable of commanding at the senior ranks of the operational force, it takes a similar amount of time to develop an acquisition professional with the knowledge, skills, and experience needed to manage large defense acquisition efforts,” the panel wrote.

About the Author: Matthew Weigelt is a senior writer covering acquisition and procurement for Federal Computer Week.  This article appeared Mar. 22, 2012 at http://washingtontechnology.com/articles/2012/03/22/regulatory-reform-dod-acquisition.aspx?s=wtdaily_230312.

Filed Under: Contracting News Tagged With: acquisition, acquisition workforce, DoD, federal regulations, OMB, regulatory reform, training

Obama’s regulatory chief announces reforms at 30 agencies

May 31, 2011 By ei2admin

Fleshing out agency responses to President Obama’s push to rethink regulations, Office of Information and Regulatory Administrator Cass Sunstein on Thursday announced alterations to long-standing rules under way at 30 federal agencies that together, he said, could save billions in dollars and millions of staff hours.

In his summary of agency progress 120 days after Obama’s Jan. 18 executive order, Sunstein said current paperwork reduction efforts at the Transportation and Labor departments and the Environmental Protection Agency alone could save $1 billion and tens of millions of work hours for state and local governments. He spoke at a talk titled “A Regulatory Look-Back: A First Look” at the American Enterprise Institute, his former employer, and he published a related op-ed on “21st-Century Regulation” in the May 26 Wall Street Journal.

The Obama initiative, Sunstein said, is “a corrective to national debate on regulation that has become polarized and stylized in a way not helpful. One side,” he said, “defends reductions in deaths on the highway, fighting fraud and abuse, keeping air and water clean and our food safe. But more recently, the other side says such regulations impair competitiveness, undermine innovation and ultimately cost jobs.

“They are legitimate arguments, but we can’t be solving serious problems in the abstract. The polarized debate is stuck in the past.”

A modern regulatory approach, he said, cannot rely on “anecdotes or intuition,” but instead must move toward “real-world random testing” of the benefits and harms of regulations. This requires “a change in culture in Washington to focus constantly on what is and what is not working,” he said. In the future, “agencies must hard-wire such scrutiny into agency processes.”

Today’s professional regulators “know much more than they knew during the New Deal and the Great Society,” or even during the 1980s and 1990s, he added. “Now we have state-of-the-art technology for cataloging the impact, risks and costs of regulations. Sometimes in reducing one risk, you increase another and there are ancillary harms,” he said. “But there are also ancillary benefits, and lives are saved.” What is desirable, he said, is “free choice, which both provides liberty and costs less.” Simpler regulations and public disclosure “help produce informed choices and creative approaches,” Sunstein said.

Sunstein made a bid to bridge the partisan divide. “It’s true that people’s values differ, but when the evidence is clear, it will lead in a direction even if there is an intensive difference in values. If a regulation brings big costs and little benefit, then citizens are unlikely to like it regardless of whether they are elephants or donkeys,” he said.

Examples of agencies’ current work include 70 initiatives at Transportation, 50 reforms at the Health and Human Resources Department, and 12 short-term high-priority projects at EPA. The Treasury Department has a five-year paperless initiative that will save 12 million pounds of paper and $400 million, Sunstein said.

EPA recently decided that that classifying milk as an oil — and thus requiring precautions to prevent oil spills — was an unjustifiable burden on dairy farmers, and so the resulting easing of rules will save industry $1 billion in the next decade. Similarly, EPA determined that gas stations no longer need air pollution recovery systems because modern vehicles do the job, saving upwards of $60 million annually, he said. And the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, he said, will save millions of dollars by eliminating 1.9 million annual hours of redundant employer reporting.

“Many of the [reforms] focus on the small businesses that create jobs,” Sunstein said. “And some are a fundamental rethinking of how things have been done.”

He is also determined to rid the Code of Federal Regulations of references to countries that “no longer exist.”

Laying out four principles, Sunstein said modern regulations should encourage public participation through ready access to scientific and technical information; should be harmonized and simplified to boost innovation; should use quantification to catalog costs and benefits; and emphasize freedom of choice, which “promotes compliance.”

In response to a questioner, Sunstein acknowledged that some of the recent changes were expansions of regulations rather than eliminations.

The National Association of Manufacturers, which has long been critical of Obama’s approach to regulation, reacted to Sunstein’s announcement with a statement: “Manufacturers are encouraged by the Obama administration’s efforts to streamline or remove several outdated and unnecessary regulations to allow manufacturers to focus on what matters most — creating jobs and economic growth. However, manufacturing workers will not fully benefit until the crushing burden of proposed new regulations is brought under control.

“The administration has taken several positive steps recently,” the group said. mentioning EPA’s effort on industrial boilers and OSHA’s work on noise standards as indicators that the administration has heard the concerns of manufacturers. “But new burdensome regulations such as those proposed by EPA to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and change ozone standards are a real threat to job creators and the economy. While today’s announcement is a great step, more must be done to limit the cumulative burden of regulations on businesses.”

Matt Madia, regulatory policy analyst for OMB Watch, a monitoring nonprofit, had a wait-and-see response. “There’s nothing wrong with doing a review,” he said, “but we should not lose sight of the fact that these regulations were written for a reason — to protect the environment, human health and the economy.”

Sunstein said there currently are 120 rules under review at the Office of Management and Budget and that the look back has not caused any noticeable slowdown.

The agency actions released today are for public comment, and should be finalized in “roughly 80 days,” he said.

Sunstein called his initiative “a defining moment” that will have impact decades in the future. He quoted Alexander Hamilton’s first Federalist paper, in which the Founding Father asked whether the country would be guided by “reflection and choice or be forever destined to depend on accident and force.”

— by Charles S. Clark – Government Executive – May 26, 2011 at http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=47880&dcn=e_gvet

Filed Under: Contracting News Tagged With: DOT, economic recovery, EPA, federal regulations, HHS, manufacturing, OMB, OSHA, regulatory reform, small business, Treasury Dept.

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