Federal acquisition wiki

Alice Lipowicz reports that GSA is testing a Better Buy wiki.

I knew that once the civil service was given the chance they would enthusiastically adopt social media. Collaboration is what government service is all about, so it is just too useful not to be used.

Legitimizing social media

WFED's Jason Miller has a story about the GSA's guidelines for social media. I predict it will have an effect far beyond the civil service. Federal guidelines on almost anything have a way of becoming de facto guidelines for the whole society.

For all our anti-government rhetoric, the federal government is still regarded as the objective and authoritative source for standards.

New to me: GSA blog

Via Chris Dorobek: Around the Corner: Innovation in the Business of Government: A One GSA, One Voice Blog

Lurita Doan resigns from GSA

Lurita Doan resigns as GSA administrator

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

Great moments in government procurement

OMB issues records management guidance

When agencies build or purchase new information technology systems, they should make records management and archiving capabilities be part of the system, decreed the Office of Management and Budget earlier this month in a memo signed by Karen Evans, OMB’s administrator for e-government and information technology.

The memo also suggested purchasing such software through the General Services Administration's SmartBUY program.

There's one small problem, according to Tony Byrne, who runs CMS Watch, an analyst firm for enterprise content management software. Namely, there is only one records management product on the SmartBUY list, from a company called Meridio, now owned by Autonomy. And Byrne writes that while it does records management, it is not a full archiving solution (a charge the company disputes, see below).

Congratulations Autonomy.

GSA inadvertently deleted the CA.GOV domain

Federal GSA Temporarily Pulls Plug on California Government Domain

"Last Tuesday at about 11 a.m.," said California Department of Technology Services spokesman Jim Hanacek, "we received an e-mail from the federal General Services Administration saying they were deleting the ca.gov domain from their master server." The message however, arrived as an ordinary e-mail, said Hanacek, and went to an e-mail in-box where it was noticed about noon.

When the potential impact of shutting down all the ca.gov Web sites was realized, the issue quickly elevated, and about 2 p.m., the state activated the Emergency Operations Center.

A hacker had evidently redirected traffic from the Transportation Authority of Marin County to a pornographic Web site. Since the federal GSA is responsible for the dot gov domain, they pulled the plug.

Who was the hacker? What sort of investigation is being made. What is the process to pull down the domain for an entire state? We need some answers.

Slashdot discusses.

GovGab Blog

General Services Administration Introduces GovGab Blog

A new general government blog has been launched by the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) to further improve citizen access to official government information and services.

"Americans clearly love the idea and practice of blogging," said GSA Administrator Lurita Doan. "The creation of GovGab is another step forward in improving public access to government information and services. This blog will be an invaluable resource in helping us keep citizens informed of the many opportunities and programs offered by the U.S. government."

Available at GovGab.gov, the blog features daily posts from a GSA team of five managers, each drawing on his or her professional experience as a government information expert to help spotlight U.S. government information and services of greatest use in Americans' daily lives. Some 57 million Americans are active throughout the blogosphere.

Welcome to blogosphere.

FMLOB Testing Strategy RFI

Via Fed CFO blog we learn that the GSA has put out a Request for Information for evaluating providers for the Financial Management Line of Business (FMLoB) Initiative.

The Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act

TCG alerts us this item from Federal Computer Week:

GSA opens competition for federal funding database

GSA knew Eagle Eye could provide the data because the market research firm works with OMB Watch, a nonprofit organization, to set up FedSpending.org. Congress mandated that the Office of Management and Budget set up a public Web site similar to FedSpending.org, which lists all contract and grants data. Congress passed the act in September 2006. The law charges OMB with corralling agencies to provide accurate data for a public database that Congress said would improve government accountability by Jan. 1, 2008.

Vendors have until Aug. 24 to respond to the RFP.

As TCG suggests, it is unlikely anyone but Eagle Eye will be able to bid.

The coming debate over federal contracting

Connie the Contractor

Unfortunately, another outgrowth of "acquisition reform" was the notion of allowing many agencies (e.g., NASA, NIH, Commerce) to earn commissions based on sales by performing contracting services for other government agencies. This concept is also known as entrepreneurial government. The result has been a tremendous growth in so-called government-wide acquisition contracts (GWACs) and other multi-agency contracting vehicles. Of course, the primary purpose of these contracting programs is not necessarily to get the best deal for taxpayers, but rather to create profit centers for the contracting agencies through commissions earned. Since the "commissions" generated by this approach all come from appropriated funds paid by the using agencies, the incentive structure to get the best deal for taxpayers is completely distorted.

This controversy is only going to grow. My advice to contractors is to make change your friend instead of your enemy.

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.

GSA Request for Information Sharing Capabilities

D -- Sources Sought for Information Sharing Capabilities

The General Services Administration is conducting a sources sought market survey in accordance with FAR, Part 10. This notice neither constitutes an Invitation for Bids (IFB) or a Request for Proposal (RFP), nor does it restrict the Government to an ultimate acquisition approach. All businesses that are interested in possibly submitting a proposal if requested in the future may respond to this sources sought notice no later than the closing date of the announcement. If the responsible business has a GSA schedule please include the schedule number in their responses.

The General Services Administration (GSA) is looking for sources that can enhance GSA's information sharing capabilities. These information sharing capabilities include the following:

1. Formal languages such as Resource Description Framework(RDF), Web Ontology Language (OWL), Knowledge Interchange Format (KIF), Common Logic (CL) and Metaslang
2. Use of open source rules engines, reasoners and theorem provers.
3. Application of logics to practical problems in information sharing including description logic and first order logic.
4. Methods and approaches in knowledge representation, semantic integration, information flow, formal concept analysis, category theory and the semantic web.

Respondents should provide contact information and a brief description on the following web site http://www.osera.gov/web/guest/isp as "Interested Parties."

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

GSA Administrator Doan to testify before the Waxman committee

GSA Chief Is Accused of Playing Politics

Witnesses have told congressional investigators that the chief of the General Services Administration and a deputy in Karl Rove's political affairs office at the White House joined in a videoconference earlier this year with top GSA political appointees, who discussed ways to help Republican candidates.

With GSA Administrator Lurita Alexis Doan and up to 40 regional administrators on hand, J. Scott Jennings, the White House's deputy director of political affairs, gave a PowerPoint presentation on Jan. 26 of polling data about the 2006 elections. ...

I can think of no reason for such a presentation to the Government Services Administration.

..On Wednesday, Doan is scheduled to appear before Waxman's committee to answer questions about the videoconference and other issues. The committee is investigating whether remarks made during the videoconference violated the Hatch Act, a federal law that restricts executive-branch employees from using their positions for political purposes. Those found in violation of the act do not face criminal penalties but can be removed from their jobs. ...

This blog intends to cover this hearing.

... Doan, a wealthy former government contractor who sold her company before taking over the GSA last May, has hired three law firms and two media relations companies at her own expense to handle inquiries from the federal investigators and the news media. ...

I knew Waxman was going to make Crisis Communications a growth industry.

Doan Denies 'Improper' Use of Agency for GOP

Waxman's investigation began in response to a Jan. 19 story in The Washington Post about a no-bid job Doan tried to give to firms run by Edie Fraser, a veteran Washington public relations executive who had served as a paid consultant to Doan. Waxman's investigators concluded that the two women had "a long-standing business relationship" that was not "previously disclosed," according to Waxman's letter.

Between 2003 and 2005, Fraser billed Doan as much as $20,000 a month in consulting fees to "generally promote attributes" of Doan and her company, New Technology Management Inc., according to invoices obtained by The Post. In all, Doan paid at least $417,500 to companies affiliated with Fraser before Doan took over the GSA, according to Waxman's investigators.

Last year, Fraser helped prepare Doan for her GSA confirmation and lined up political support for her, according to interviews and e-mails obtained by The Post.

I wonder who is going to prepare Fraser for her appearance before the Waxman committee. Crisis Communications is going to make a lot of money out of this Congress; but our industry is going to look bad, really bad.