From The Acquisition Corner The Federal Acquisition Innovation and Reform (FAIR) Institute, a nonprofit focusing on federal contracting reform, earlier this month released a report on acquisition workforce development in conjunction with their Point of View series on federal contracting. The report, like their earlier work, is a common-sense approach to tackling difficult issues inRead… Read more »
From The Acquisition Corner: The central pillars of acquisition reform are to prevent and eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse. To that end, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), chair of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee’s Contracting Oversight Subcommittee, held a scheduled hearing to take a closer look at the Alaska Native Corporation (ANC) 8(a)Read… Read more »
From Federal Computer Week As the discussion about acquisition reform continues in Congress and throughout the federal government, a new emphasis is emerging on workforce development as critical to successful acquisitions. Concern about the nearing wave of large-scale retirements has grown for the past several years, yet no good solution has emerged. Recent press coverageRead… Read more »
From the Acquisition Corner: http://bit.ly/1qv18 Comments made by Ed O’Hare, assistant commissioner of the Office of Integrated Technology Services in GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service, seemed to have created a bit of controversy in regards to the future of Government Wide Acquisition Contracts. Federal Computer Week reported on the story, and according to experts: …They sayRead… Read more »
In light of all the focus recently on federal acquisition reform, one of the agencies with the most problems is the Department of Veterans Affairs. The VA is a case study on what the failed policies of the past in regards to workforce development have done to the present difficulties with completing the acquisition missionRead… Read more »
The Federal Acquisition Innovation and Reform (FAIR) Institute, a new nonprofit focusing on federal contracting reform, released a report in response to the push by the Obama administration to reevaluate when it is appropriate to outsource and use contractors. Specifically, the report provides high-level policy guidance on the specifics of President Obama’s March memo onRead… Read more »
The GAO report entitled Better Performance Information Needed to Support Agency Contract Award Decisions (GAO-09-374), lays out a disturbing trend in government oversight and contract management that needs to be corrected on many levels if the government is to increase performance of federal contracts. As noted in the report, the typical information management problem ofRead… Read more »
The much anticipated Smart Contracting Caucus met this week for the first time since being created over a year ago by former House Oversight and Government Reform ranking member Tom Davis, (R-VA). The intent of the Caucus was to consider thoughtful federal procurement reform by having a type of 360-review of issues facing the contractingRead… Read more »
As acquisition reform initiatives move forward in Congress, specifically with the House following the Senate in passing their defense acquisition reform bill, personnel issues continue to be at the forefront of discussions and focus on reform initiatives. Of course it goes without saying that the announcement to bring 20,000 acquisition positions in house at theRead… Read more »
As I closely follow developments in the current wave of acquisition reform, there certainly seems to be a focus on awarding more fixed price contracts, and the reduction of other contract types such as cost type and time and materials. What I find interesting in all this talk about commercial best practices and streamlining theRead… Read more »