Contracting

  • The General Services Administration tells agencies they shouldn\'t rule out contractors who don\'t have Federal Risk and Authorization Management program authorizations yet. The program is only a few years old. And GSA says agencies who require FedRAMP compliance as a condition for contractors to bid on work, are limiting competition. Katie Lewin is the former program manager for cloud computing at the General Services Administration, and now an independent consultant. She tells In Depth with Francis Rose what government\'s role is in vendors being able to adopt FedRAMP.

    June 11, 2015
  • A new executive order is causing some heartburn for the contracting community. Roger Waldron is the president of the Coalition for Government Procurement. He tells In Depth with Francis Rose, why industry is hesitant about proposed guidelines to implement the Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces executive order.

    June 11, 2015
  • What if you\'re paying a fixed price for services, but the contractor starts to fall down on the job? That\'s what happened to the Army in Afghanistan. It hired a company called Mansoor International to provide trucking. Mansoor was paid a fixed price for each trip, but then things started to go wrong. Joe Petrillo, a partner at the law firm Petrillo and Powell, joined Tom Temin on the Federal Drive for more on the case and the lessons learned we turn to procurement attorney Joe Petrillo, a partner at the law firm Petrillo and Powell.

    June 11, 2015
  • In the final policy to implement Federal IT Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA), federal CIO Tony Scott detailed several steps to ensure agencies meet the spirit and intent of the law. Meanwhile, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee members promise not to make FITARA Clinger-Cohen Act 2.0 when it comes to implementation.

    June 11, 2015
  • Shay Assad, the director of Defense pricing, said the Defense Contract Management Agency will open an additional five centers of excellence over the next few months to help military services and agencies make better decisions when buying commercial items. Assad said DoD also needs to move to value-based pricing.

    June 10, 2015
  • Brian Miller, managing director in the Disputes and Investigations Practice at Navigant will give us his thoughts on GSA\'s transactional data reporting rule. June 9, 2015

    June 09, 2015
  • A new memo from federal chief information officer Tony Scott gives agencies 19 months to move all Internet-facing sites and Web services to the HTTPS standard.

    June 09, 2015
  • Joanne Woytek, program manager of the NASA SEWP program, joins host Mark Amtower to talk about SEWP V. June 8, 2015

    June 08, 2015
  • Anne Rung, the administrator in the Office of Federal Procurement Policy, will issue a new policy in the coming months telling the largest 25 agencies to set up an innovative procurement organization similar to the HHS Buyers Club in the next year or two.

    June 08, 2015
  • Less than half of the paperwork the Small Business Administration finishes when an employee or contractor leaves the agency is complete and filled out correctly. SBA\'s inspector general said the agency isn\'t following its own separation procedures when an employee leaves. Seventy-three network accounts are still active for employees who are already gone. SBA is supposed to deactivate those accounts within 24 hours after an employee leaves. Troy Meyer, assistant inspector general for audit at the Small Business Administration\'s Office of Inspector General, tells In Depth with Francis Rose where his office started with this report.

    June 08, 2015
  • A new bill would let companies challenge the agency through an administrative process that promises to be simpler and cheaper than litigation. Witnesses at a congressional hearing said they feared new size standards would alter competition for $200 billion in small-business set asides.

    June 08, 2015
  • In Senate hearings regarding the recent breach of the Get Transcript system last week, IRS officials said they were \"reviewing options\" to make their online services more secure. They did not mention the agency already has asked vendors for bids on a wide array of new authentication services.

    June 08, 2015
  • National Academy of Public Administration President and CEO Dan Blair, NAPA Director of Project Development Joe Mitchell, and NAPA Fellow David Chu will discuss academy\'s current projects and initiatives. June 5, 2015

    June 05, 2015
  • Health and Human Services\' Buyer\'s Club celebrated its one-year anniversary earlier this week by releasing a major solicitation. The request for proposal marks a growing recognition that improving the federal acquisition process is possible. Mark Naggar is the program manager for the HHS Buyer\'s Club. He tells Executive Editor Jason Miller about how his organization is helping the Office of Population Affairs reform how it buys technology. Naggar says few agencies are particularly good at carrying out IT projects involving services.

    June 05, 2015