Acquisition

  • The Army awarded the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle to Oshkosh. The contract could be worth as much as 30 billion dollars. The award is a blow to Lockheed Martin and AM General, the other bidders on the contract. James Tinsley is managing director at Avascent. He's been following the JLTV competition since the beginning and he tells In Depth with Francis Rose that the award to Oshkosh isn't a huge surprise.

    August 26, 2015
  • The Secretary of the Air Force and its Chief of Staff say a full year continuing resolution would have a significant impact on the service, particularly by slowing down or halting as many as 50 acquisition programs.

    August 26, 2015
  • The Acquisition Gateway at the General Services Administration is the culmination of a series of initiatives the administration and the agency have been focused on for a long time. Category management and hallways are just two of the initiatives rolled into the Acquisition Gateway. Laura Stanton is acting assistant commissioner for the Office of Strategy Management at the General Services Administration. She tells In Depth with Francis Rose the idea for the Acquisition Gateway sprung from talking to acquisition professionals in government.

    August 25, 2015
  • The Coast Guard is seeing many of its projects growing into programs of record with acquisition plans and contracts that are both on schedule and on budget thanks to a new strategy.

    August 25, 2015
  • The Defense Department is working on new training and guidance to help its contracting officers decide whether potential contracts are worth the price. The Government Accountability Office sampled 32 commercial contracts. DOD contracting officials asked for cost, pricing and other information to help them determine if contracts were reasonably priced for 12 of them. Bill Woods is director of acquisition and sourcing management issues at GAO. He said it's too early to say whether the Pentagon's training and guidance is working, but he tells In Depth with Francis Rose that contracting officers DO have some challenges.

    August 24, 2015
  • The new Coast Guard chief acquisition officer is in place. Rear Adm. Joe Vojvodich is assistant commandant for acquisition at the Coast Guard and the chief acquisition officer. His portfolio includes three domains: aviation programs, surface programs and C4ISR. Admiral Vojvodich tells In Depth with Francis Rose about some of his current — and future — priorities in the surface programs portfolio.

    August 24, 2015
  • Geoff Livingston, president of Tenacity5 Media will discuss the state of social media with host Mark Amtower. August 24, 2015

    August 24, 2015
  • The time to move from contract award to full implementation under the continuous diagnostics and mitigation (CDM) program will force agencies to decide whether to spend money on new tools or wait for those coming from DHS.

    August 24, 2015
  • A proposed rule to promote small business subcontracting should be revised to ease the compliance burden on prime contractors. That's the opinion expressed in a letter the American Bar Association's Section of Public Contract Law has sent to the General Services Administration. They claim the rule should be rewritten to allow primes to inquire about a small business's size directly from subcontractors, instead of an unreliable government database. Keir Bancroft is a partner in the government contracts practice at Venable. He joined the Federal Drive with Tom Temin with more on the proposed rule and the ABA's objections to it.

    August 21, 2015
  • Congress will keep a close eye on whether the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act works for agencies as planned. Agencies were supposed to hand in their plans for implementing FITARA last week. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee says it might consider giving agencies report cards to measure how well they stick to those plans. Dave Powner, director of information technology management issues at the Government Accountability Office, tells In Depth with Francis Rose why grades are a good idea and should push agencies to perform better.

    August 20, 2015
  • Frustrations over the Buy Indian Act are about as old as the law itself. Congress passed the bill back in 1910. It's supposed to open up Indian-owned businesses to the federal market. But it's unclear whether Buy Indian Act set-aside contracts take priority over other set-asides, especially at agencies like the Bureau of Indian Affairs and Indian Health Service. Steve Koprince, managing partner at Koprince Law, tells In Depth with Francis Rose what makes the bill so confusing.

    August 20, 2015
  • The Army plans on requesting proposals for the third iterations of its ITES and ADMC contracts by next January. New proposals will likely tackle target areas such as mobility, cloud integration and cybersecurity, but CHESS wants to make sure small businesses are in the running for contracts.

    August 20, 2015
  • When it comes to evaluating the prices in bids for services, agencies have to use more than rote formulas. They've also got to consider whether a contractor is taking a unique or special approach that might provide more value. That's the gist of a protest case involving the Navy and Fluor Federal Solutions. Joe Petrillo is a partner at the law firm Petrillo and Powell. He joined the Federal Drive with Tom Temin to review the lessons learned from this case.

    August 20, 2015
  • Altegrity, USIS’s parent company, agreed to forgo at least $30 million in fees the government owed it in return for not being held liable for alleged violations of the “dumping” or “flushing” security clearances over a 18-year period.

    August 20, 2015