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A company's reputation is an important part of its success and its reputation could be harmed if it is known as a business that protests everything, says contracting expert Tim Sullivan. This post is the second in the 10-part series, "10 Myths of Government Contracting."
The Defense Department wants to maintain its technological advantage in warfare. To do so, it relies on the U.S. industrial base. Next month, DoD will launch a competition to develop a new Institute for Manufacturing. But not just any manufacturing, in this case the work will have to involve photonics. The awardee will receive $110 million to jump start the institute. Adele Ratcliff is director of Manufacturing Technology in DoD's Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Manufacturing and Industrial Base Policy. She joined Tom Temin on the Federal Drive to discuss the objective of the new institute.
Simon Szykman is joining Attain as its chief technology officer of the federal services division.
In the first part of a 10-part series on government contracting, expert Tim Sullivan says even if a company has a no-protest policy, it is naïve to believe that it can completely insulate itself from the protest process.
Analysis by the Center for Strategic and International Studies shows R&D took the biggest hit, dropping by 21 percent in a single year. But payments to large firms and spending on large contracts got some degree of protection.
Grant Schneider was the chief information officer at the Defense Intelligence Agency for seven years before leaving for a two-year detail at OMB earlier this month. Schneider said DIA relies less on contractors and is knee deep in shared services.
The Department of Labor released its final rule for a minimum wage hike for federal contracting employees by 2015.
Jerry Punderson, the outgoing director of contracts for the Naval Sea Systems Command, will join PSC as its new senior vice president of defense and intelligence.
The Veterans Affairs inspector general issued a report alleging the deputy chief procurement officer at the Veterans Health Administration used her position to promote and award a contract to FedBid, a reverse auction vendor, and improperly acted as an agent of the vendor, creating a conflict of interest.
Nov. 15 is the deadline for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to patch up the cybersecurity holes in the Healthcare.gov website. The Government Accountability Office offered 22 technical recommendations to the agency last week. Those problems appear just as the website nears its first birthday. Raj Sharma is co-founder and CEO of the Censeo Consulting Group. On the In Depth with Francis Rose Industry Chatter segment, he shared some ways to predict, and fix, longstanding problems with large federal IT projects like Healthcare.gov.
SRA loses its bid protest of the HHS award for cloud email services to InfoReliance. GAO says HHS' evaluation factors were reasonable and properly considered.
The industry association is once again in turmoil as it gets rid of Mike Hettinger, who was brought in to stabilize the association after a tumultuous year. TechAmerica brings in two consultants, Larry Allen and Bill Greenwalt, to handle the day-to-day activities of the organization in the meantime.
The latest blueprint to improve DoD's acquisition process will try to help the military achieve game-changing end products and spend less time on the business end of the acquisition system. Frank Kendall, the undersecretary of Defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, said the strategy remains in draft form while DoD gathers feedback from a variety of experts.
Mike Sade, a former federal acquisition executive, said the consolidation of schedule contracts makes sense, but there are several unanswered questions GSA needs to address.