Acquisition Policy

  • IT Alliance for Public Sector experts say there are two major reasons for their fleeting hope—one is the little time lawmakers have in Washington over the next four months; and second is the continued impasse among the Senate and House over the role of agency CIOs. ITAPS says a two-and-a-half month continuing resolution is likely and an omnibus spending bill for 2015 is gaining support.

    August 07, 2014
  • Frank Kendall, the undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, sent a letter to Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Carl Levin (D-Mich.) back in June detailing how Congress can help DoD improve its acquisition outcomes. The list includes stopping sequestration, continued support of workforce training and simplifying rules and regulations.

    August 06, 2014
  • Industry needs to be "more creative and bold" when it comes to helping agencies solve their biggest challenges, says AT&T executive Casey Coleman, the former chief information officer at the General Services Administration. (This is an archive program that originally aired July 9, 2014.)

    August 06, 2014
  • Gormley Group President Bill Gormley and Bloomberg Government's Cameron Leuthy and Miguel Garrido discuss the end of the fiscal year budget scramble, and what contractors should be doing to take advantage of the surge in buying. August 5, 2014

    August 05, 2014
  • The General Services Administration plans to have draft governmentwide policies for reusing and recycling used electronics by the end of this fiscal year. Kevin Kampschroer, deputy senior sustainability official for GSA, announced the agency's efforts at the release of the updated national strategy for sustainable electronics.

    August 04, 2014
  • Sonny Hashmi issued a memo requiring agency software developers to look at open source before they consider traditional commercial solutions.

    July 31, 2014
  • President Obama is renewing and expanding a policy that will let the government pay its contractors faster. Contractors will get to pay their subcontractors faster, too. The White House says QuickPay has generated more than a billion dollars for small businesses, freeing up their capital to invest and hire employees. For how this is playing out at the ground level, Tom Temin and Emily Kopp spoke with Necole Parker, principal and CEO of the Elocen Group, on the Federal Drive. She described how QuickPay has benefited her company.

    July 31, 2014
  • Sonny Hashmi, chief information officer at the General Services Administration, joins Federal News Radio for a free online chat to discuss everything from mobility to zero-based budgeting and collaboration, among other topics.

    July 31, 2014
  • Federal workers to see as much as 50 percent less cubicle or office space as part of how agencies are reducing office space costs. Rep. Lou Barletta (R-Pa.) pressed GSA and others on their preparation to more efficiently deal with 100 million square feet of leased space that is scheduled to expire in the next five years.

    July 31, 2014
  • Improving acquisition compliance and ethics may involve less rulemaking and more culture shaping according to panelists at the National Contract Management Association's World Congress conference. At the conference, agency leaders discussed the need to streamline and pursue innovative approaches to federal acquisition policies.

    July 30, 2014
  • President Barack Obama's nominee Anne Rung takes another step forward in becoming administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy.

    July 30, 2014
  • Kay Ely, GSA's director of IT schedule programs in the Federal Acquisition Service, said removing 1,000 vendors who weren't meeting the minimum annual sales requirement of $25,000 a year is saving the agency about $3.2 million a year in administrative costs. At the same time, GSA is adding 30-to-40 new vendors each month to Schedule 70 as part of its effort to make sure agency customers have access to new, innovative companies.

    July 30, 2014
  • Tiffany Hixson, the professional services category executive at GSA's Federal Acquisition Service discusses the new professional services category management agenda for FAS and what it means for customer agencies and contractors. July 29, 2014

    July 29, 2014
  • A partially trained workforce working within a nearly impossible system is not a recipe for success. But that's how things are when it comes to federal acquisition, according to the Professional Services Council. The industry group has sent Congress a long list of recommendations to make procurement faster and more competitive. Council President Stan Soloway joined Tom Temin and Emily Kopp on the Federal Drive to discuss how the study got started.

    July 29, 2014