Congratulations Lurita Doan

Just received this from Federal News Radio:

Federal News Radio Continues To Grow Staff
Lurita Doan On Board as Analyst and Commentator


WASHINGTON, D.C. July 22, 2008 – Washington’s Federal News Radio WFED (1050 AM) has announced the addition of the Honorable Lurita Doan, the candid and controversial former Administrator of the General Services Administration, as a regular contributor of commentary and analysis. Her segment - “Leadership Matters” - will focus on leadership challenges facing the federal government. “Leadership Matters” will air every Tuesday morning at 7:28 a.m. beginning July 29.

Administrator Doan has been described as controversial, outspoken, a contrarian, a catalyst, a breath of fresh air, and an “inside Washington outsider.”

“Those characteristics make her a perfect fit for commentary and analysis on Federal News Radio,” says Program Director Lisa Wolfe. “Her insights on how the federal government operates and her opinions on how it should operate will be food for thought for the senior executive, political and contractor. You’ll be able to hear her commentary on the radio and also read her OP-EDs on the web at FederalNewsRadio.com.”

Doan served as the Administrator of GSA from May 2006 to April 2008. Prior to her Senate confirmation, Lurita worked for 15 years as the CEO of a surveillance technology company she founded in 1990. Administrator Doan has received numerous awards, including the prestigious, tri-national 2008 “Friend of the Americas.” Previous recipients include Secretary Tom Ridge and then Governor George Bush. Other honors include the National Women’s Business Council Award for Entrepreneurship, the Committee of 200 Luminary Award for Innovation in Technology, the Office Depot Entrepreneurial Visionary Award, the Visionary Award from the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship, Network Journal’s 25 Most Influential Black Women in Business and Washington Business Journal’s Women Who Mean Business.

Quite a change of pace. I am glad to see that she landed on her feet.

Lurita Doan resigns from GSA

Lurita Doan resigns as GSA administrator

What took so long? Too many other scandals distracting the White House?

Sun Microsystems and the GSA

Changes Spurred Buying, Abuses

In February 2005, an auditor at the General Services Administration presented evidence to agency leaders that one of the government's top technology contractors was overcharging taxpayers.

GSA auditor James M. Corcoran reported that Sun Microsystems had billed the government millions more for computer software and technical support than it charged its commercial customers.

If true, the allegation was grounds to terminate the contract and launch a fraud investigation. Instead, senior GSA officials pressed last summer to renew the contract.

This is every federal contractor’s nightmare, a high profile congressional investigation complete with a front-page story in the Washington Post. This is also one of the differences between the private sector and government contracting. If a business thinks you are ripping them off they will simply change suppliers. The last thing they want is a series of articles about how they permitted themselves to be ripped off. Governments are led by politicians who make their careers by exposing fraud, real and imagined. Every detail of your contract could be subject to public scrutiny.

For the civil servants caught up in this, it is a fearsome thing. It is very difficult to defend yourself against an angry committee chairman. The best thing I can suggest is to contact your public affairs officer and get the facts before the public. That is what the news room section of your website is for. Work with the government contracting press, who don’t have to be brought up to speed on the finer points of GSA rules and procedures.

Sun needs to get its story out. There is nothing on their website. I would recommend a straight forward explanation of their side of the negotiations along with a timeline. It would also be useful to document any differences between what they offer their commercial customers, and what they do for their federal customers, in a way that would allow the general public to understand why the federal government is paying a higher price.

There is one point on which I would like clarification:

As it negotiated with the GSA, Sun hired the Washington Management Group, a consulting firm that employs former senior GSA officials, the Waxman memo said. The firm operates the Coalition for Government Procurement, an association of GSA contractors that includes Sun.

I have never heard of trade association that was operated as a division of a private company. I would like to know more about this.

It would be useful if we had a time line beginning with the laws that changed the rules of government contracting. What are those laws and when did they go into effect? Are they just laws or are executive orders also involved? When did the cut backs in personnel overseeing the contracts occur? What areas were affected? We need some charts to show the rise of both the number of contracts and the dollars expended.

Rise in expenditure is not, in and of itself, an indicator of wrong doing. During the period in question every single government agency launched its website. They also completely changed the way they manage documents. These were success stories and should not be treated as suspect.

GSA chief violated Hatch Act, OSC report finds

Federal Times

An Office of Special Counsel report has found that General Services Administration chief Lurita Doan violated the Hatch Act, which bars federal officials from partisan political activity while on the job, sources say.

Like we didn't see that one coming down I-95.

There is going to be a lot more like this. The next eighteen months are going to be one investigation after the other, punctuated by the occasional indictment or plea bargain.

It's a great time to be in e-discovery, records management, and litigation support.

Waxman hearings miscellany

FCW’s Buzz of the Week seems to have missed the point:

And the January lunch, although almost undeniably inappropriate, was not planned or approved by Doan and came months after one election and years before another.

If you think of Washington, DC as an ocean, then you must understand that the great political storms blow across the surface, while the civil service, their contractors, and the press which covers them, inhabit the abyssal sea, far below the storm.

If you want to use federal contracts to make politicians in marginal districts look good, you have to plan months in advance. You have to know which contractors are located in which districts, and of those, which have the best connections to the politicians in question. In order to have contracts in place to puff vulnerable politicians in time to affect the election, you have to plan months in advance. The same publication which has a detailed understanding of software life-cycle management, and why advanced planning is essential to good IT management, seems to have failed to understand why a political briefing for the GSA had to be held in January 2006 if it was to use government contracting to affect the 2008 election. It is simply impossible to come up with any other reason for such a meeting.

Matthew Weigelt has a good summary of the day’s proceedings, my favorite quote - “These meetings grew out of a recognized need to do team-building with GSA’s noncareer employees,” Doan said. As one of the committee members asked, what sort of team were you building?

G. Martin Wagner has a good article explaining why all this matters, highly recommended for those not familiar with federal contracting. Even if you never intend to sell to the federal government, this affects you as a citizen.

Sun Microsystems, Doan, and the Waxman Committee

The Washington Post

The five-hour hearing also focused on Doan's involvement last year in a contract dispute with Sun Microsystems, a technology firm that GSA auditors allege had overcharged the government.

Waxman's committee heard testimony from Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), who has also been examining the Sun deal.

Grassley testified that his investigators found evidence that Doan and her senior aides urged the agency's contracting staff to renew the contract, despite questions about alleged fraud and overcharging.

By August last year, three contracting officers had balked at renewing Sun's contract with the GSA.

Grassley said that despite "repeated warnings" to senior GSA officials in 2006 about the contract, GSA renewed the contract with Doan's blessing and "with no conditions, strings, or precautions regarding the alleged fraud."

Doan said she had an obligation to keep a close eye on the Sun contract and did nothing wrong. She said she did not "even know" the contract officials involved in negotiations. She said she urged a solution to a negotiation impasse with an important government contractor but did not intervene.

So far Sun Microsystems has issued no statement on the controversy. This is typical of federal contractors in these sorts of disputes, keep your head down and let the politicians slug it out. I think they are well advised, it may not be edifying, but it works.

Lurita Doan’s testimony to the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform

Government Executive has an excellent preview with links to the relevant documents. FCW has a summary of the morning’s testimony which is very sympathetic to Doan, mostly for what it leaves out.

Listening to the hearing on CSPAN, it seem to me to be a disaster for Doan. Her use of the selective memory defense was so disingenuous as to embarrassing. Waxman has wisely put the relevant documents on the committee website. I don’t see how anyone can look at the January 26 slide presentation and not conclude that is was an improper presentation for a government agency. Doan’s protestations, that while she attended the meeting she had no memory whatsoever of the presentation, and was unable to characterize it, insults our intelligence.

On the whole these hearings and investigations will be a good thing for government contractors.

Further coverage -
Federal Times: New memo details allegations against GSA administrator