Inside the Reporter’s Notebook – A solution to the growing bid-protest problem

Inside the Reporter’s Notebook is a weekly dispatch of news and information you may have missed or that slipped through the cracks at conferences, hearings and other events. This is not a column or commentary – it’s news tidbits, strongly-sourced buzz, and other items of interest that have happened or are happening in the federal IT and acquisition communities.

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A solution to the growing bid-protest problem

In the next couple of weeks or so, the Government Accountability Office will release its annual report to Congress on bid protests for the past fiscal year. At that point, we will continue the discussion about whether vendors are protesting more contracts each year or whether it just feels that way.

No matter what the statistics from GAO tell us — for instance, in 2014 the number of bid protests grew by 5 percent — the perception among many is contractor challenges to agency award decisions are not only expected, but planned for at an alarming rate. If you ask almost any contracting officer or program manager running a major acquisition, they build an extra 100 days into their schedule for the bid protest.

There is a way to fix this growing problem — again, whether real or perceived, it is a problem. And unfortunately for the government and industry, it’s a problem despite two “mythbuster” memos from OFPP emphasizing and encouraging more agency-vendor communications.

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Agencies closing the gaps in quest to reform IT

The House Oversight and Government Reform’s oversight hearing on the Federal IT Acquisition Reform Act provided a treasure trove of tidbits about where agencies are heading over the next year.

This was the first oversight hearing since the Office of Management and Budget released its final policy in June.

In the four months since then, agencies have submitted and received feedback on their plans to meet the common baseline outlined in the final regulation. OMB expects agencies to finalize their plans to close the gaps between the common baseline and their current state of IT oversight, and post the document on a public website by Dec. 31.

Agencies have been working on meeting the requirements in FITARA really since President Barack Obama signed the bill into law about a year ago.

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OFPP tells agencies to trust, but verify acquisition oversight systems

The Office of Federal Procurement Policy recently took an idea from the national dialogue to improve the federal acquisition process and put it into reality, and it could save agencies and vendors hundreds of thousands of dollars or more.

OFPP quietly released a memo creating reciprocity for agencies to use a contractor’s earned value management systems (EVMS) once it’s been certified by one department.

“Depending on the rigor of the review and other variables, the cost of a certification can exceed $1 million. In addition, a contractor that achieves certification for its system at one agency may not be recognized by other agencies as having a compliant system and may be required to complete yet another costly certification process,” wrote administrator Anne Rung in the Oct. 23 memo. “Contractors have observed that certification processes used by some agencies are similar. Recognition of another agency’s certification, as appropriate, would eliminate duplicative compliance reviews and result in a cost savings for both the contractor and the taxpayer. Accordingly, agencies are encouraged to enter into reciprocal agreements with other agencies and to post their EVM processes and procedures on their public websites.”

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