Federal Drive Interviews — March 19, 2013

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has been working on a bill to overhaul how the government buys IT. The first draft of the Federal IT Acquisition Reform Act came out late last year. It got lots of feedback. Now a second draft is out with major revisions. Brocade, a networking equipment maker testified about the original bill. Anthony Robbins, the company’s vice president of federal sales, joins The Federal Drive to discuss how industry is viewing the bill.

Incompetence, non-compliance with standards, poor professional judgment. Those are some of the things the Defense inspector general found wrong with the Defense Contract Audit Agency. In fact, three-quarters of the major contract audits it did in 2010 have something wrong with them. And that’s after a round of corrective measures launched back in 2009.

Fifty years after the Civil Rights movement, black federal employees say they still face discrimination at work. But now it’s unconscious biases or perceptions that prevent them from moving up the career ladder. For example, African Americans say their bosses don’t promote them. If not because of a lack of qualifications, then why? The issue is described in a new report from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

The word “sequestration” may be a new one to federal workers, but budget cuts in tough times are old hat. Remember the National Performance Review? That was the Clinton-era initiative that saw a 15 percent workforce reduction over eight years. The results were mixed and they give us a lot of food for thought with the current cuts. That’s the subject of a new report from the Coalition for Effective Change.

An early and visible initiative of the Obama administration was cutting back on no-bid contracts. But last year no-bid contracts reached a high of more than $115 billion, up nearly 9 percent from 2009. That’s according to new analysis by Bloomberg Government.

Related Story: No-bid U.S. government contracts jump 9 percent, despite push for competition (The Washington Post)

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